Four Part Harmony

As anyone who knows me knows, I happen to be interested in musical instruments.
Especially, stringed musical instruments, and especially guitars.
As long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with lutherie, but it always seemed the territory of a) expert woodworkers/craftsmen with decades of experience; b) people with a lot more money and time on their hands than me; and c) people with a fantastic array of specialty tools and a 2000 square foot, climate controlled shop in the backyard.

This bothered me. For a long time. Then one day a month or so ago, I just decided that even if it took me ten years from start to finish to build just one guitar, I was going to go ahead and get started.

I ordered some wood.

Now before I get started, I’d better get a few things out of the way. there are a lot of people out there building guitars. And there are a lot of people doing just what I’m doing, with little in the way of experience but with more than enough curiosity and determination to make up for it. And a lot of them keep a record of their building process on a blog or website (how do you think I got the idea that I might be able to pull this off)?

So it seems there are a few required photos that everyone has to take to get started so here goes…

Here’s a shot of everything that came in the big box o’ stuff that I ordered from LMI. Some small tools like clamps, a chisel, a plane, but most importantly, the wood that will become the guitar. A chunk of Mahogany for the neck, East Indian rosewood for the sides

Here’s a shot of the blueprint. It was (and continues to be) a bit of a mystery how I will be able to get accurate measurements from this thing, but so far so good.

Here’s the East Indian Rosewood back plate. I decided (after a lot of back and forth) to have the plates joined and roughly thicknessed by the shop, rather than try to do it myself. In retrospect, I kind of wish I hadn’t because those would be good skills to learn, but with my minimal tool selection I though it might prove problematic.

A close-up of the Sitka spruce top, also joined and thicknessed. This thing is very, very light, and it seems to have some interesting figure to it.

Stay tuned, and feel free to leave comments if you have any questions (or better yet advice). I have a feeling this might take a while.