Sides and Bending Them

Once you have all your materials and a mold built to assist in building your guitar, you have a few options of what to do first. You could join and cut out the front or do the same for the back. You could start by working on the neck. Or you could start with the sides. I chose to start with the sides because I honestly thought that would be the most difficult part of building a guitar. I figured either I would be able to do it and the rest would be a breeze or I wouldn’t and I would just stop there without wasting any more time or money on it. To my surprise, bending the sides is not nearly as difficult as it first appears. As with most woodworking, a little bit of patience will get you a long way when it comes to building a guitar including bending the sides. But it is not that difficult.

There are several different ways you can go about bending the sides of a guitar.

1. Bending Machine – A bending machine is likely to be the easiest method of bending the sides of a guitar consistently. Unfortunately, it is also the most expensive. Additionally you would have to get different side molds for the bending machine every time you wanted to build a different size or style or guitar. But if you have enough money to buy one, you probably are not concerned with having to buy additional side plates for it. Luthiers Mercantile International sells bending machines like the one shown below.

 

                          

2. Heating Blankets – No, not the ones you put on your sore muscles. They make high temperature heating blankets that can be used to evenly heat up a full length side of a guitar to make it pliable so that it can be shaped to your guitar mold that you built. Once the wood reaches a certain temperature it is easily bent into shape, when the heat is removed, the wood will retain the shape of the mold.  Luthiers Mercantile International also sells these heating blankets.

                                          

3. Bending Iron – A bending iron is essentially a heated pipe that you manually work the wood against in the correct locations to bend the wood into the correct shape. This is probably by far the most difficult, but this is how I did mine and as I stated above it is really not as difficult as it seems. Below is a picture of a bending iron from Luthiers Mercantile Internation. But if you read on further, I think you can save some money like I did.

                                          

Now before you get too concerned with the prices of the above LMII’s products, there are plans on how to build bending machines as well as bending irons. A bending iron would obviously be the simplest choice to build on your own. You basically need a board, a pipe, a collar, nuts and bolts and a heat source. Some people have used electric heaters inserted into the pipe. Others have used blow torches. I personally opted for what I thought was the easiest and safest heat source that would reach the right temperatures. I use an electric heat gun. If you choose your pipe size wisely, the heat gun fits rather well. Below is a picture (and link) to a bending iron with plans that I found on the internet.

If you want to get a little fancier, you could try building the below side bender machine. If you click on the picture it will take you to the free plans that are available. If you are going to build many guitars and want them to be consistent, this may be the way to go.

Other Guitar Parts You Will Need

Now that you have looked at patterns and narrowed your choices of wood, you also need to consider buying all the non-wood pieces for your guitar. More specifically you will need the following

            1)      Truss Rod

            2)      Fret wire

            3)      Tuners

            4)      Nut & Saddle

            5)      Bridge Pins

            6)      Neck Connection Hardware

            7)      Strings

Good guitar plans will likely make recommendations on at least several of those while leaving some up to personal choice. I will go through a few of them that I have learned a few things about in my research.

Although the length of the truss rod is going to depend on the style of guitar you are building, there are basically three categories to choose from. The first category is a simple non-adjustable truss rod. One of the main purposes of a truss rod is to strength the neck. A non-adjustable truss rod would certainly strengthen the neck and help it to maintain its position but I personally think it would be a mistake. Unless you were absolutely perfect, you will probably want to be able to make neck adjustments using the truss rod. And even if you were perfect, everything settles with time and down the road it may be necessary to make neck adjustments. As far as adjustable truss rods go, they have both single action and double action adjustable truss rods. From my understanding the double action truss rods are a relatively newer item. A traditional single action truss rod is in essence used to counter the pull of the strings. That is it will adjust to provide a back bow away from the strings to compensate for the strings pulling in the opposite direction. A double action truss rod will allow you to adjust the neck either direction regardless of the tension from the strings. I personally went with the double action, although I think for the most part a single action truss rod should be more than enough.

Fret wire will likely be recommended in your plans as far as size. Fret wire then comes in several materials such as nickel, brass and stainless steel. As with all things they all likely have their good points and bad points. I believe nickel and brass are the more traditional fret wire materials while the stainless steel is a relatively newer concept. I actually have yet to buy my fret wire, so anyone reading this please feel free to make your recommendations.

Tuners are one of those things that will probably be a very personal choice. I grabbed my tuners on EBay for pretty cheap but they are nothing special. You can spend a lot of money on tuners if that’s what you want. One of the main things to keep in mind is that closed gear tuners will usually maintain better since the moving parts are not exposed to the dust and dirt.

The nut, saddle and bridge pins should match and be purchased together. Beyond just color you have several choices of material from the cheap end of plastic to bone to fossil ivory among other choices. All of which can affect the tone of your guitar. So it would be good to do a little research before buying these. Here is a decent article talking specifically about material for the Nut of the guitar. Going Nuts.  Although not discussed in that particular article, my nut, saddle and bridge pins that I purchased are made out of horn. I believe they would probably follow the same characteristics as bone.

Well that pretty much covers what I have as far as buying parts.  Below are some good places to purchase all of the above parts.

Useful Links

Ebay Luthier Supplies

Allied Luthier

Stewart MacDonald

Luthiers Mercantile International Inc.

Guitar Plans and Molds

Let’s take a look at guitar plans and molds. There are a lot of guitar plans on the internet. A simple Google search for “guitar plans” will turn up many possibilities. Of course you will then have to search through them and find one that you believe is what you want and what you can manage to build. Even though there were quite a few free plans that I found, I chose to go with a more detailed plan that I paid for since I have not built a guitar before. Now that I am a ways into building my first one, I might not shy away from the less detailed free plans but for a beginner I definitely would get as detailed of plans as possible.

I won’t insult you by listing out the Google search results for you but I will provide you with the link to where I bought my guitar plans. I bought my guitar plans from Ultimate Guitar Online. I was extremely happy with the plans provided. They included 8 pdfs of full scale sheets containing all aspects of the guitar as well as full size templates for all the pieces and plans to build the guitar form for that guitar. Each sheet contained detailed comments and instructions. I am sure there are a lot of good guitar plans out there but if you want to make sure you get good plans then I would take a visit to Ultimate Guitar Online.

If you are a newbie to guitar building, as I am, you may be wondering what a guitar form is. I know I certainly was wondering what it was. It is actually a structure that you build to help form and assemble the guitar. They come in a variety of styles but the 2 categories would be the outside form or an inside form. An outside form would be one that you basically form and build the guitar around the outside of the form. An inside form is one in which you form and build the guitar inside the mold. Below are some pictures of my inside guitar mold that I built, for my guitar that I am building. Again the plans came from Ultimate Guitar Online with my guitar plans I ordered. I would not have thought of using a form or mold and it definitely adds time and money to the project, but in the end I think it is well worth it. And it is obviously reusable.

Now that I have built a form and I am over half way done building my first guitar, I will say that an adjustable form may be worth the investment. Below is a picture of an adjustable form I found on EBay. The EBay seller is cnc-products. If you click on it, it will take you to the EBay seller who seems to continue to produce these for auction. I’m sure any of you looking to build a guitar could easily build of of these as well or just buy one from cnc-products. The benefit to the adjustable mold is the ability to make different types and sizes of guitars using one form, as opposed to I can only make the exact same guitar with the form I made.

Or the other option is to make really cheap, basically throw away, forms each time you build a guitar instead of going through the effort of making a really nice form. This may be particularly appealing to the person that only plans on building one guitar. Below is a YouTube video from a guy that I found helpful to watch his guitar build videos. This video specifically goes into materials etc. for the guitar he is building but pay attention to his mold. It is very simple and quick to put together. So if you are looking for a one time build you might want to do it his way. You should definitely check out all of his videos, but just keep in mind your guitar plans may call for you to do things differently. Mine did I know.

Now go pick find/buy your plans so you can get started picking out your materials you need and get ready to build your guitar!!! Post or send pics of your plans and materials you plan to use. I am always interested in seeing what everyone else is doing.

Guitar Woods

So let’s talk about wood for a guitar. You will need several types of wood to build a guitar. Specifically you will need wood for the soundboard, the back and sides, the neck, front and back bracing, the bridge and fingerboard, tail and neck blocks, and then possibly some purfling and kerfing.

Before I start suggesting woods…if you aren’t aware yet, you should always get quartersawn wood for each piece of your guitar. Quarter sawn wood is much more stable and less likely to warp and give you headaches as you build your guitar. For a better explanation on quarter sawn wood, here is a link. Quartersawn Lumber for Guitars.

The soundboard wood could be argued as the most important choice you will make when building a guitar, although I personally think every choice probably needs to be made wisely. There are a number of woods that people recommend. Probably the most recommended is spruce. There are several varieties to choose from of spruce, but besides looks I don’t think there is a great deal of difference. Some other soundboard wood options that seem fairly common are red cedar or redwood. I have bought some pieces of redwood to make an attempt using that on my next guitar (or possibly some other stringed instrument). I chose to go with Engelmann Spruce. It is not quite the bottom end but pretty close. Again to me there did not seem to be a huge difference among the spruce choices.  Make sure you get a book matched set unless of course you feel like dishing out some money for a solid piece for your top.

For the sides and the back you will have a lot more choices of wood to choose from. The general thought is that you want a hard wood that will provide great tone as well as look nice. And you will want to make sure you buy a book matched set. Mahogany is a very popular choice because it is relatively easy to work with, provides good tone and looks alright. It doesn’t look bad, but it definitely won’t stand out. There really is too many choices to list when it comes to types of wood you could use for your back and sides. You will just have to look around and see what you want along with how much you want to spend. I definitely suggest a good day or two of research as a minimum before purchasing your wood. I ended up choosing Walnut for my back and sides. I have always liked the look of walnut. 

The third main wood you will need for your guitar is the neck wood. Now you can go about this two ways. The first is to use a solid blank piece of wood. If you choose this route you should again make sure you get quartersawn wood. The other way, which is the way I chose to go is to use multiple pieces of different kinds of wood glued together to make a single piece thick enough to make your neck from. Being cheap and having access to some decent hardwood of a couple different kinds, I opted for gluing pieces together. I’m sure some guitar makers might frown on this, but I found quite a few “professional” builders that do this. If you stick with a single quartersawn piece, your best bet is probably mahogany. If you choose to glue several pieces together, your choices and combinations are endless it seems. I went with Maple and Walnut in a 5 strip pattern. Outsides are Walnut and next layer in is Maple and the center strip is a thinner slice of Walnut sized to match the width of my truss rod.

Now we get to some of the smaller pieces of wood you will need. Bracing and kerfing are used to strengthen and attach the top, sides and back. Kerfing is the slotted wood that will follow the curved sides and is used to attach the sides to the top and back along with provide some strength. They pretty much follow similar recommendations as the top, back and sides. That is the bracing for the top will be similar wood to what you used on your top. For example software woods such as spruce and basswood are the typical. And then for the bracing and kerfing for the sides and back should be a harder wood such as Mahogany or the same wood you used for the back and sides. There really isn’t a lot of choice to be made here, especially if you are just going to buy the pieces online.

The tail and neck blocks are the next in line. The neck block probably be the more important of the two choices, although you might as well make them both the same type of wood. The neck block is where the neck attaches to the body of the guitar. So you really want to make sure this piece is strong and will hold up. Most builders seem to stick with a good string Mahogany for these two pieces.

The bridge and fingerboard wood should probably purchased together, or at least that is my preference since they are typically the same type of wood. Again you have a huge selection of wood. They should be a hardwood so that they hold up. I personally went with an ebony to contrast with the light colored soundboard, you could choose just about any hardwood I would think.

Purfling is an optional thing according to most, but some suggest that it adds additional strength to the guitar. I would be of half the mind to believe that it does add some strength to the guitar. If you don’t know what purfling is, it is the decorative (again possibly more than just decorative) strip that goes around the edge of the sides of the guitar. The kinds of purfling are almost limitless as well. You can even use plastic or leather purfling. I stuck with the same wood as my sides but I may switch that when I get to that stage.

So now where can you get all of this wood from? Well first I would recommend that you read my next blog post before going on to purchase your wood, which will be on patterns and molds. Perhaps I should have written that post first but woods seemed like a good place to start.

But I will point you at a few links to places you can purchase guitar woods so you can start browsing around them. I will mention that I personally bought most of my wood on EBay. I know most wouldn’t think about buying wood on EBay but there are a lot of people selling luthier supplies including wood on EBay. Obviously you need to be careful but usually if you red peoples feedback you can get an idea of the level of satisfaction that other have had.  Personally when I am shopping on EBay I am looking to get a deal, so I would suggest becoming familiar with the pricing of these other online vendors that I will provide the links for below. I have order pieces and parts from some of these vendors, I just stuck with EBay for the main pieces of wood for my guitar.

Useful Links

Ebay Luthier Supplies

Oregon Wild Wood

Allied Luthier

Stewart MacDonald

Luthiers Mercantile International Inc.

RC Tonewoods

Tell us what you are working on!

Ok. So for a little while on this blog, I will be focusing on guitar building since that is the current main project I am working on. Occasionally I will divert for other projects. But just because I am focusing on guitar building feel free to let us know what you are working on. I actually may just occasionally stick a post in simply for everyone to discuss what they are working on. In fact consider this post one of those posts. Comment on this post and let myself and everyone know what you are working on.

I also feel the need to keep reminding everyone that I am not an expert but just want to share my own experience and things I have digested from the web and other resources. Feel free to interject your own opinions and experience if you have them.

Hello and Welcome to Paul's Amateur Woodworking Garage!

This is my blog for amateur garage woodworkers, brought to you by an amateur woodworker. My name is Paul Unger and I will be your host as long as you continue to tune in. I guess I will start by providing a little background on my interest and experience in wood working. I have actually been building things out of wood since I was a little kid. My Grandfather was a carpenter and cabinet maker for all of his adult life. He passed on the interest, but not the career, to my own dad who has maintained a full workshop for all of my life. My dad has always leaned towards doing more rough carpentry woodworking, whereas I apparently inherited the finer cabinet making traits of my grandfather. Although I do not make cabinets, I prefer to work on more detailed projects. Although I have done wood working since I was a kid there has been a couple gaps. I actually just acquired some new tools after having had to get rid of all my wood working tools 4 years ago due to relocating from several states away to a house with no room for a workshop. I still do not really have room but have taken over most of the garage, thus the name of the blog. For my first project, I decided to take on what some consider to be the ultimate wood working project...building an acoustic guitar from scratch. In my next few posts I will start posting about the steps I have taken so far along with some photos of each step. With any luck one of you will find the information useful. Feel free to add your comments, questions or suggestions and I will do my best to respond to all. Additionally I hope to at some point start posting links to useful sites, products and information. Again recommendations from all of you will always be welcome as well.