A little distracted

Okay so this is what we're working with here.... Not long ago I had a cold and I was unable to sleep due to a cough.... So I was on the web looking for tuners for the OM and stumbled across a video on cigar box guitars... Tune them to an open cord and you're a slide playing blues man.... How cool is that? I think most of you know that I built one that day and now I'm going to be starting No. 8.... Back in that mix I was on the phone telling a couple of friends (Derek &Howard) about them and each of them wanted one so they became my first customers. Next my sister Kathy is telling me about this farmers market in St.Pete that is a very cool mix of farmers market - art show - party. We went and go checked it out over the weekend and now I am trying to get accepted as a vendor (for at least a couple of months). So the OM guitar building is on hold, but with good reason I am really working on my neck building, fretting skills and set up skills. Not to mention that I have to put together a brochure and website....

I have made friends with a guitar player teacher on youtube named Keni Lee Burgess. He is a fantastic player of old time music and delta blues. You need to check him out his CD is very nicely done and one of my new favorites. He sells his Cd's on Ebay just search Keni Lee. You can also check out some of his videos on You Tube. I should also tell you on his second video in his seres 4 CBG lessons he has a plug for my guitars. I am including one of his instructional videos with each on my guitars. Well that's my story for now and I am sticking to it.

These are great little instruments they are fun to make, sound cool and are really fun to play. If I can make a few of these to sell along the way that's even better.


Here is a shot of No. 7 it has 18 frets 22" scale oak neck with paduak fingerboard. It is a cake pan resonator model this picture was taken when I was setting it up the plastic is still on the drain cover. This is really a nice little instrument ( Hey I feel that way about all of them)...

CBG?????

Okay I am not gonna lie to you it's going to get a little strange (two dragons)..... Well it started out as a darn cold and a couple of Saturdays ago I woke up with the worst cough... I couldn't go back to bed so there I am 6 am and I am on Ebay looking for guitar tuners and I come across this video on CBG's (cigar box guitars) and hour or so later I know I want one.... This is a picture of the 2nd build... A lot of fun to make and play....

I love building guitars- It's so relaxing

Now that's a good looking fingerboard.... Oh, the binding looks good and the neck dots look nice, yep, let's see now 3,5,7,9,11 @#*&@^#!^ 11??????? What happened to 12? Bummer!

Neck and Fingerboard work

Well after repairing the cracked brace back to work on the neck. The following pictures clearly detail the significant influence John Mayes video on neck making and JJ Donohue's tutorial
http://luthiercom.org/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=459&sid=cf563bf1dfd228f95401f06b6f51bb18#p7458 on volute neck making have had on my process.



Maple binding .25" x .06" glued and taped to the fingerboard working towards the outer edge.


Detail showing what John calls his crossbow. (the binding was actually longer to ensure go contact at edge).


Pretty straight forward shot detailing taped binding.


Close up of binding on fingerboard.


Fiber headstock next step is to route channel for nut.

The dark line on the right side of the brace is a pretty nasty crack that I caused by over tightening the vise I used to hold the guitar while fitting the neck..... Bummer!


After a quick trip to ACE hardware where I was able to find compression springs I was able to modify the pictured syringes into service to glue the brace back together.


Here you can see the process I am going to leave these in place for 24 hours.

Woolson Jig

Here is a picture of the Woolson jig that I made to route the tenon on the neck....

Here are a couple of quick shots of the new Neck. Five piece lamination from Mahogany, Black fiber and Maple. It's still pretty chunky but the volute is starting to come along and it shouldn't be that much longer before I have it down to size.



Still need to look for something for the head plate and I am thinking about binding the finger board. I'll try to post more of the pictures of the glue up and my new jig that I used for routing the tenon in a later post.