My acoustic guitar build

As a little winter project I had a go at building a guitar from a stewmac kit, although I come from a very musical family I have not got a note in my head except for maybe a bad rendition of "Patricia the stripper" I know nothing about guitars or building one but they seem to go hand in hand with a lot of boaters and boats are my thing so here we go.

To start with I built a "go bar deck" this will be used for holding parts in place with fibreglass rods, I will be using bamboo plant holders a lot cheeper.

Go bar deck.

Clamping the sides together.

The sides are formed around two cardboard cutouts that give a good strong base.

Marking the sound board for the bracing.

This is where the Go bar comes into play, with the small sticks you can see clearly where the bracing goes and it also makes it easy to clean any squeeze out glue.

Soundboard done and bracing shaped, this is an important part of the build and there are experts that listen to tapping sounds on different parts of the board and shave a bit more off the bracing to get different sounds, I just tapped mine and it sounded like someone tapping on wood so I'm happy with that. 🙂

Pre cutout for the rosette.

Rosette in, there is a little gap at the top but that will be covered by the fret board.

Pegs holding the kerfed linings.

On the bottom board I used a scrap bit of wood with a curve sanded into it so it would hold its shape. The back and sides are rosewood and the top is sitka spruce.

Made the neck from some scrap wood.

Just kidding, I made a sanding board with a 5 degree angle to mach the back board.

Cutting out for the bracing to pass through the body this will later be covered by the binding.

That should hold it.

More bracing added to the sides.

Just need to clean up the edges now and that will be the body mostly done.

Started on the fret board marking out for the pearl inlay.

Cutting the fret wire.

It took me a while to find a hard enough bone to make the nut and saddle but this should do. 🙂

getting ready for the thrust rod.

Installed the push me pull me rod "truss rod"

Shaping the neck in the style of a Martin guitar Birds Beak .

Installed the side dots and coated the neck in boiled linseed oil, from what I have read a very high gloss finish would make the hand stick while playing.

Nerve wrecking time routing out for the binding and herringbone purfling, I didn't have a router to fit so I had to grind one down and swap the bearings then rapped a bit of tape around it to get it to the perfect size.

Marked out the start and stop points that go with the grain, routers are very powerful things and can easily mess up a job if it goes wrong it happened when I was doing a test piece the bearing flew off and bit chopped up the test wood so I put it back on with lock nut. This cut is for the purfling.

And now you can see the cut for the binding.

The back is just cut for binding, all went well and I can breath again.

Also cutout and glued the end cap in place.

Tacked in place with super glue, when I seal coat the guitar with epoxy it will fill in any gaps and hold it all in place.

First few coats of epoxy resin to seal the wood. I think Kyle is keeping an eye on me 🙂

I will now sand this back with 320 grit sand paper.

6 coats of Halfords lacquer later.

All done, another 6 coats let sit for a few weeks then sanded from 800 grit all the way to 12,000 grit then rubbing compound and wax.