Guide needed

When your journey takes you through unknown territory it is easy to become frustrated, disappointed, and maybe even hopeless. You can suffer through and learn from your own mistakes or you could make things a little easier by employing a guide, someone or something that knows the way. First time guitar building isn’t nuclear physics but it is challenging. I’ve been reading whatever I can find on the web and I’ve watched a few youtube videos. Most of the information is helpful but of course there’s a ton that doesn’t really apply. My favorite acoustic guitar building website so far is authored by J. Sevy and can be found here http://gicl.cs.drexel.edu/people/sevy/luthierie/guitarmaking_guide/building_flattop.html .

My old guitar has a flat top and a rounded bottom, kind of like an old girlfriend from way back when and also pretty much like every other acoustic guitar I’ve seen. I want the tailgate guitar to be a little different so I’m taking inspiration from Mr. Sevy and I’m going to build my guitar with an arched top. I figure a little extra effort will make the tailgate guitar nearly perfect, kind of like my wife... I don’t know what kind of math it takes to figure out lengths of ellipticals, curves, domes etc. so I applied the KISS theory and built a guide . A template to help get the arch right. I started by gluing together the guitar back pieces. Since the back is thin and somewhat flexible and the correct width I held it’s edge against a board and tweaked it with my hands just a bit to create a long gentle curve. Then I marked the curve with a pencil and used a jigsaw to cut it out. Now I have a board to serve as a template to guide me in constructing the internal bracing for the top of the tailgate guitar. If the bracing has the correct arch, so will the top. I simply held the guide against the bracing that I had already built and sanded down the high spots until the whole thing matched the guide. Of course this is required along the whole length of the brace.

Other guides that I will need and have built are the side bending form and the body outline form. There’s no way that you can “eyeball” this stuff.

Guides are good. I like guides.

“Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”

Psalm 119:105



I used a jigsaw to cut out the curve.
This just became my guide to help me get the
 internal brace arching just right.



Chuck.



2 pieces of the black walnut cut to the proper

length and glued together. Imagine each half

          as pages in a book. If you flip one so that it

covers the other they will be in the same position

that they grew in the tree. I "turned" the page

 to create the lighter colored sapwood stripe

down the middle. I used the walnut as a guide

to draw the curve on the board below.





This is the body outline form placed
over the black walnut back.



The guide is placed on top of the brace
and I sanded down the high spots until all of the
contact points just touched the brace.

This is the form I will use to bend and shape
 the sides of Tailgate Guitar. Notice how it corresponds
to the body outline forms, which are just the pieces that fell off
when I cut out this shape.



Inspiration

What inspires you to do anything?

Maybe you see something really cool in a magazine or on-line and you want to try to do something similar. Maybe you have a strong desire to achieve some level of success and you'll do whatever it takes to get there. Maybe you have a want or need for something and you would rather build it than buy it. That's the category my current project falls in to.

I have decided to build an acoustic guitar. I don't need one. I don't know how to play one. I do know a few chords but I'm a long, long way from proficient. Carpal tunnel syndrome and subsequent surgery put an end to guitar lessons a few years ago but I'm healed now and I would like to try again. My guitar is a plain, old, no name acoustic that I gave to my son when he turned 13. He's 25 now. He went on to become an excellent guitar player and now has a very nice guitar. I hadn't seen my guitar for awhile so I asked my daughter if she knew where it was. I was pretty sure that one of her friends had borrowed it. Turned out it was in her room, in a soft case, but somehow the neck had been broken.  At first I thought it was beyond repair. I enjoy woodworking but the break was jagged  and I wasn't sure that the old guitar was worth the effort to fix it. After a few days of thinking it over I decided to use the old guitar for a pattern to build a new guitar. I went ahead and did my best to repair the old one with clamps and glue, mainly so I'd have an intact neck to measure. To my surprise, it seems to be holding up ok, but the idea to build a new one had incubated long enough so I'm going through with it.

There is quite a bit of information on-line related to building an acoustic guitar. It seems that lots of people have built one and blogged about their experience. I made a few decisions before I did any research and I now know that I've already made some mistakes. Regardless, I am determined to make this guitar one of a kind. It may not sound great, I may not be able to play it well, but I'm going to do my best to make it look good! Something tells me that this first guitar I'm building won't be the last guitar I build. I don't have a workshop. I have a pick-up truck. I'm building this guitar on the tailgate, hence the name "Tailgate Guitar". I have a few basic tools and a love for creativity. We'll see how it goes.



A trip to a local sawmill yielded 7 pieces.
these will become the back and sides.
This is enough wood for 2 guitars!



I found this piece of Black Walnut
at an exotic woods dealer in Atlanta.