Introduction

The finished classical guitar

So I play guitar and one day I spoke to someone  in a guitar shop who had built their own guitar. "Build your own guitar?" I thought - it was just something which never occurred to me before, like guitars just get made in a factory and that's it. So it got me thinking that it was a great idea and something challenging to do. The idea of choosing your own materials, designing it and hopefully having a decent sounding instrument at the end was enough to make me take the plunge and give it a go, with little previous woodworking experience. Whilst I did initially go on a part-time guitarmaking course for a short while to teach me some basics, I found it too expensive and I've done much of this build at home wherever I could find some space, without  overly expensive professional tools (often to the annoyance of my girlfriend in the process, with my tools all over the kitchen or living room table!). Don't get me wrong , it's not cheap and you will need to lay out a fair bit of cash to buy some tools  to complete the job, but you don't need to go overboard. I hope it will inspire you to take the plunge and have a go if you're a complete beginner like me or you're just thinking about it.

I also initially thought this wouldn't take me very long and I'd have it completed within a year. How wrong I was - I work full time and did this in my spare time every now and then, so it turned into a much longer term project than I anticipated. If you're a beginner like me, expect that it will take much longer than you think and you will certainly face obstacles along the way, which will extend the time to complete further. However, it is all a worthwhile learning experience in the end and it really depends on how much time and effort you can put in. 

This is by no means a definitive guide to building a guitar as there are hundreds of different techniques and methods involved for different styles and types of guitars, each luthier building to different techniques and preferences. This one is for a classical guitar based on my experiences. I hope that although I am very much an amateur luthier and this is my first attempt, that you can still take something away from this and pick up some tips as I have and avoid some of the pitfalls. I really should've started this blog and added to it as I progressed, but I never got round to it until now. I write this blog as I'm getting to the end of the building process and have taken many pictures along the way as a reference  - so I will be posting more day by day, with the aim that I'll have completed the guitar by the end of the blog!

As a reference book throughout this project, I can highly recommend  this book (£14.99 at Amazon):

Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology by William R. Cumpiano

It is very comprehensive and clear to read even for a beginner without access to very expensive tools, as well as going into plenty of detail for each stage of the process. It certainly proved invaluable to me when I wasn't sure what to do.

 

I don't want to go into tremendous detail about every stage of the building process as there are plenty of other resources around and you will really need a book to get the details of measurements etc., but just to give an idea of what it involves with plenty of pictures. Some of the pics are good quality some not as good as it depends on whether I was organised with a camera or just had a poor mobile phone camera to hand at the time, but will give you an idea.

To make it easier to recognise achievements, mistakes I have made or useful tips I have to share during the build, at various stages of the blog you will see:

...when something has gone well

...when I have a helpful bit of information

...when I have made a real mess of things, or something's gone wrong, doh!

Also, I have put a small handy list of luthier suppliers and resources on the sidebar to the right. There is also eBay to consider, which I have found is also a great source of tools and luthier supplies for some items. I am based in the UK, so whilst the blog is more geared to the UK with my references, it shouldn't make a difference and you should be able to find similar tools and supplies where ever you are.

If I can be of assistance to you, by all means contact me - Good luck and enjoy!

Type of Guitar, Materials & Tools

Since I had already chosen to build a classical guitar, I had to decide on the type to base the design on. Aside from the general shape and size of the guitar, there are many different internal construction arrangements depending on the type of build you want to do; for example, you may want to make a small-bodied parlour style guitar or a guitar more suited to finger style or flamenco, or even a cutaway, which may have different bracing patterns inside to allow the sound to resonate and suit the size/type of guitar. I actually wanted to make a standard cutaway classical, but because this is my first guitar, was advised against it as it can be difficult to bend wood and making the jump to a cutaway guitar on the first attempt would probably be a step to far. The benchmark internal classical bracing design is the Torres construction which uses a fan style bracing pattern - he seemed to be way ahead of his time and surprisingly, this hasn't changed too much since the 19th century! There are many variations of his design, but from what I understand, the general style is the accepted standard to build the internal bracing. I went with this as it's been tried and tested. You will also be choosing the materials of the guitar like me which in my opinion, probably affects the sound to a greater degree than worrying too much about which bracing pattern is best.

I decided to make a standard sized classical suitable for most styles as I like to play finger style and other types of styles; I chose the Torres design, but with my own personal preferences for the guitar scale length, nut width and neck depth.

You can get all sorts of computer generated full scale design plans from luthier suppliers (see links to the right), or there are plenty more specialised suppliers with wider ranges of designs available if you search on the Internet.

MATERIALS
 

Now's the fun part - choosing the wood. I decided I wanted to make a guitar with dark back and sides and a light top, but also had to sound rich with a reasonably deep bass, decent mid-range and clear trebles. The wood you choose has major effects on the final sound the guitar will make. Keep in mind that you'll have to bend, plane, sand, chisel and saw the wood - some types of wood are easier to work with than others, some bend easier, some sand easier, all these things should be taken into consideration as well as how you want the guitar to sound. The guitar top for example will sound more mellow if you decide to use cedar and more crisp at the treble end if you decide to use spruce. Deeper bass if using rosewood back and sides, or lighter in tone if you use cypress (more for flamenco) or maple. I decided on the following:

Top: European Spruce - good clear trebles, works traditionally well with rosewood tonally

Back and Sides: East Indian Rosewood - tonally responsive with a rich bass and good mid-range

Neck: Cedrela - a very light wood, easy to work with. I found this wood a bit too crumbly for my liking, but it does have the advantage of being very light

Binding: Ebony - very dense hardwood, difficult to work with, but looks good and thought I'd give it a go

Bridge, Headstock and Fingerboard: Rio Rosewood - I like the contrast of this wood to other rosewood, adds a bit more exotic feel to the guitar

This link may help you decide

TOOLS
 

Ah .. tools. You can never have too many tools I say. Whilst you can get all sorts of expensive tools and jigs to help you with different stages of the guitar, at the bare minimum, I'd say you'll need :

Clamps - lots of clamps of all sorts, Klemsia wood clamps,  C clamps, spring clamps, specialised bridge clamp, quick-action clamps, mini-clamps

Chisels - a good range is required, even some down to 2mm/4mm to help with some of the more intricate work, some of these can be expensive

Files - again, a good range of round, half-moon, flat files needed in different sizes, as well as some mini files

Saws - Coping saw, Gentleman's saw, flush-cut saw (Japanese flush cut saw from Axminster is superb), micro-saw (essential - Handiwork Microsaw - get from a luthier supplier)

Planes - large and small planes

Others - scalpel and #10 blades, sanding blocks, spokeshave, scraper, sharpening stones and oil, thicknessing caliper, digital caliper (£10 ones from ebay were fine), fret file, fret hammer, sandpaper of various grits up to about 320, wet and dry paper (for finishing) from 600, 800 to 1200, drill bits. Variable speed Dremel-type tool is useful, I found an inexpensive one on offer for about £7 from the now defunct Woolworths, which proved very useful for the headstock.

I built up my collection of tools as I went because I wasn't quite sure what I'd need and I suggest you do the same. Otherwise it's far too expensive and if you build it up as you go along, you don't notice to the same degree how much you've spent (!). Here are the sorts of tools I needed as I went along:

Clockwise from left to right: Bridge clamp (bottom left), clamps, saws and measuring tools, planes, chisels, files, Dremel type tool

Mould, Front & Back joins, Side Bending

Mould
You will either choose to free-build the guitar based on the 2D full scale design plan you may have, or have a 3D mould of the design. I chose to have a mould, as I felt it might be handy to hold the guitar in it and to ensure the sides were bent correctly vertically at 90 degrees, as well as correct horizontally. Either you can buy a mould of the design you've chosen (usually from the same supplier), or make a mould yourself. It should be noted that the mould is only a guide - it shouldn't be used to help the guitar stay in the correct shape and design after you've bent the sides, as then you're stressing the wood into the design which may introduce problems of its own later on; it should sit freely in the mould after the wood has been bent. I made a mould from 4 thick sheet slabs of MDF glued together and drew my design on to it. At this stage I was on the course and had access to a bandsaw to cut the design out. Otherwise I would probably have bought a mould or free bend against the flat design.


Sides

I started with the sides as I wanted to get the shape sorted out first off. For my design, the thickness of the wood was to be around 2mm all round for a good sound/structural integrity ratio. Consult your book or design for your own measurements. To achieve this takes a lot of hard work and time. The wood will be uneven straight from the supplier and it can be very boring planing the wood to correct thickness, but you'll be doing a lot of this during the build, so get used it! You need a good plane and sharp blades, plus you'll also need a caliper which has a throat depth long enough to measure the thickness throughout all points of the wood, to ensure an even thickness and tone across the wood.  Unfortunately, these calipers are not cheap!

If you find bits of the wood are ripping up instead of planing smoothly, try planing at a diagonal with the grain. Otherwise your blade is not sharp enough, or you have too much depth on the blade. Reduce the blade depth - you should be shaving fine curls of wood rather than chunks. Take care and time, it makes it much easier later on when you have to grain fill the wood if you have a smoother surface instead of pits in the wood due to bad planing 



Use chalk to help you with the thickness - shade areas where they are too thick so you know where to concentrate the planing and keep checking with the caliper as you go - more often when you get near to the 2mm. Be careful of planing too much off - I went to about 2.2mm - 2.3mm depth, as later on you will be sanding and smoothing more off and will need some tolerance to work with


Once down to thickness, it was time to bend the wood. You will need a bending iron for this, or I have seen some articles on the net involving clever substitutes such as a metal heat pipe and a normal steam iron, should be able to find more about this with a quick google. When using the bending iron, I found it quite difficult initially. You have to keep the wood wet by keep wiping it down on both sides with a cloth and water as you bend. Bend on the smaller side of the iron in small degrees for the middle section, keep checking it against the mould. For the large bends, sorry to use a cliche but let the wood do the work - use the full length of the wood against the iron and you'll get a more even, rounded shape. Keep wiping down with water. Be patient, don't rush it or you will break the wood and have to get a new set of sides. Each side bit will overhang the centre line of the mould, which is fine, because you will cut and glue them evenly later. Label the pieces for left and right sides for easy reference (whilst they should be completely symmetrical and fit the mould perfectly either side, mine weren't  exactly 100% - but it's part of the handmade nature of the build and acceptance of the limitations of your first attempt)

Fortunately, I managed to bend the wood ok without breakage - result!

You can soak the sides for about 15 mins in water beforehand. This will introduce more moisture into the wood so it doesn't dry out as much while on the iron and reduce chances of sudden breaks. Try not to burn the wood - I had a few scorch marks as you can see in the picture below, but weren't so sever that I couldn't sand them off later.

My sides looked like this:

Wahay! First real achievement complete :-)

Front & Back Joins
You should have quarter-sawn pieces of wood for the front and back, so there is a nice book-matched grain on both pieces for each of the front and back. I joined each of the two pieces for the front and back before planing them. Not sure it matters if you plane them before or after, but I thought it would be better to join first and then plane as one large piece for the front and one large piece for the back, to ensure even consistency across the middle join for each.   Just personal preference I guess. The idea here is to glue them together with absolutely no gap in the middle between the pieces across the full length of the wood. Sounds easy right? Wrong! It's actually very difficult - we're talking getting an absolutely perfect straight edge on each piece of wood using a hand tool (plane), to achieve a perfect join with not even 0.1mm of a gap - it can be time consuming to achieve this.  I used a very long heavy plane to try to get a good straight edge on each piece of wood. Then I put the pieces together and checked carefully for any gaps along the length of the join. Best to have a lightbox or a very strong light and hold the pieces against the the light. It is very difficult to achieve a perfect join and again takes some time to get it right. Mark any gaps in the join on the wood with chalk so you know where to concentrate the plane, but I found using long strokes and cutting back each time if it was too much of a gap was the only way to get a good join, as otherwise you spend a lot of time over-correcting small dips or highs across the length of the wood.


When the back pieces had a good join with no gaps, I glued them together with Titebond (Original) glue - this is the  best glue for this type of work in my opinion, as it has a 10 min pre-dry time to work with and can wipe it off with a bit of wet cloth fairly easily during this time. My clamping arrangement was like this, left overnight (using Klemsia Cam clamps). I had a large board with a solid wooden strip screwed into it. Then I put some wooden triangular splints between wooden strip and the clamps at one end, while the clamps put pressure on the sides of the wood at the other end:

I did the front pieces the same way. To give you an idea of how the sides look against the front  (as well the rosette which is the only thing I decided not to make myself - it came from eBay from Ecuador), here is how it looks. Nothing glued together yet and the rosette to be glued in later, just all carefully placed in the picture :-). Those end blocks are mahogony which I also started shaping, but we'll see those glued in later in the blog:

Making the Guitar Body Frame

BASIC JOIN

So now it was time to beef up the guitar body and make it all hold together like a guitar body should be. I had roughly cut the mahogony end blocks and made them to specification further as per my plans. I then did a dry run with the two sides to cut down the ends so they matched perfectly in the middle against the end blocks. I then glued them together. 

ADDING THE KERFING

Kerfing can be bought from a luthier supplier and gives the body structural integrity. It is a flexible strip of wood, made from mahogony in this case, with triangular shaped sections that you glue on to the edges of the sides for as the skeleton of the guitar body; it also joins the sides to the front and back pieces, as well as serving as a frame for the binding. It's easy to break the kerfing, but it tends to happen especially around the middle of the side bends and isn't the end of the world really. As long as you can still glue them in the right shape. I glued mine like this, clamping them simply with clothes pegs, but with a couple of stronger clamps for the mid-section:

 

Once this is all on, it feels more like a guitar already! Next step is to shape the back and front pieces.