Ever wonder how a guitar is built?
My love of guitars goes beyond their sound...
How to get started...
First you need to get a set of blueprints. There are a lot of guitar making supply stores on the internet. Find a guitar you want to build, then buy the plans, get some tools and wood, and you're ready to go! You can also find guitar-making kits that make it much easier for your first guitar. StewMac is a great site for guitar building supplies.
The woodworking needs to be very precise
This picture shows the guitar's top after it was thinned to a couple of millimeters, and the rosette, soundhole, and general shape have been cut from the raw wood. If you thin too much, the guitar will fall apart, if not enough, it will sound like a dud. John Bogdanovich is not only a great luthier, but he wrote my favorite book on guitar building.
Follow the plan!
The blueprints are your best friend. This one shows the inside of the guitar, specifically, the bracing that supports the top and provides resonance for the instrument. StewMac has lots of plans, books, and kits, see what you can build here!
Painstaking work
The braces not only need to be cut to the right overall size, but then they have to be trimmed at the ends and sanded to ensure that they both support the instrument's structure, and support free movement of the top so the sound can be amplified. Luthiers Mercantile International is another great site for supplies and tools.
Back braces
Both the top and the back have be to thinned and braced. The back braces are also trimmed and shaped, but they are thicker and heavier in order to support the structure of the instrument. Woodcraft offers a great selection of precision carving tools and chisels that will help make this work much more enjoyable.
The neck starts as a single plank of wood
You cut pieces off the end then stack them to create the foundation for the heel. For the headstock, you cut off a piece at an angle, then turn it around and glue it on, unless you want to use a v-joint, which is much more difficult. Robert O'Brien has a great video about how to craft a v-joint.
Bending the wood may make you sweat...
To bend the wood for the sides of the guitar, you need heat and moisture. It's really easy to crack the wood during this process so you need to be very patient and move deliberately, but slowly. My guitar building instructor used the old fashioned pipe-and-torch method which you can see in this photo. I'd strongly recommend investing in an electric bending iron to lower your risk of burning down the house!
You'll need a guitar mold to help keep the bent wood in shape
A guitar mold is necessary to keep the sides from bending back and getting out of shape. Once you've glued on the top, you won't need it, but until then the wood will keep fighting to straighten itself. A mold will keep the sides in the proper shape while you work.
Neck and tail blocks provide support
Gluing in the neck and tail support blocks will help keep the body in shape, but you'll still need to keep it in the mold until the back is glued on. I took it out to see how it looks on its own. Blocks aren't super interesting, so in lieu of an article about blocks, here's Richard Brune's website. He's a fantastic luthier, as is his son, Marshall.
Kerfing creates more surface area for gluing the top and back
Kerfing is a technique of patterned cutting, that allows you to bend solid materials including wood and acrylic by notching the solid surface. The kerfing is bent into and glued to the inside of the body. Here is a great article about the guitar linings/kerfing.
A truss rod in the neck gives you the flexibility to adjust it
Traditionally, classical guitars didn't have truss rods, but I wanted to build one in so the neck would be adjustable if necessary. Here's a solid, in-depth article about the purpose and value of the truss rod.
To make a nice headstock, you need a very thin veneer
The veneer is glued on, then you trace the headstock shape onto the veneer from your blueprint before cutting away the excess wood. Here's a nice article about how to design a custom headstock.
Carved headstock with tuners temporarily attached
Once you've carved and sanded the headstock, you can drill the holes for the tuners. for this guitar I used a really nice set of premium tuners. Here are some classical guitar tuners on Luthier's Mercantile.
Now that the kerfing is done, our next step is to glue on the top
This guitar was built with a beautiful spruce top, which is a widely used wood for both classical and acoustic guitars. The guitar building supply stores linked on this site have a large selection of woods to choose from. Acoustic Woods Ltd. has a great wood selection.
Once the top is glued on, you can safely remove the guitar from the mold
The moment when I pulled the instrument out of the mold was one of the happiest moments of the construction process. A bunch of raw boards and hunks of wood were starting to resemble a guitar! Notice that there is a fair amount of spruce overhanging the sides. This will need to be carefully chiseled and sanded away. I've owned a number of guitars in my lifetime, but my all-time favorite is a 2005 Kenny Hill Signature model that I still own. Here's Kenny's website.
The back has been glued on and the body sanded and smoothed
Sanding is tough, but at this point I wanted to check the neck angles and just see the pieces more completely as a guitar. This was a fun moment; seeing the potential here of an actual instrument! Here's a plug for another one of my favorite guitar builders, Kris Barnett.
Sanded, smoothed, and ready to be finished!
Once the hard work of sanding the body is completed, it is ready for finish. Classical guitars traditionally use French Polish, which is a shellac based finish that is painstakingly applied by hand. I used a simpler method with a brushed-on polish. If you're curious about French Polish, here's an article by Kenny Hill.
The polish really brings out the texture of the wood!
I used bubinga for the back and sides of my instrument. It is a somewhat unusual choice since most classical guitars are built with rosewood, but I loved the grain and textures of this exotic wood. The Wood Database has a great article about bubinga that includes some nice photos of examples.
Checking the neck angles again before carving the heel
Traditionally, a guitar neck was attached to the body of an acoustic guitar by fitting a precisely cut dovetail tenon into a dovetail mortise that is cut into the neck block. The fit should be so precise that almost no glue is needed to hold the two pieces together. However, like a headstock v-joint, this is an advanced woodworking technique. This article discusses the differences between a "set neck" and a "bolt on neck" which is the technique I used.
Preparing the fingerboard before gluing to the neck
The fingerboard presents a complex math problem as the frets have to be sized just right. However, there are templates available that you can use to make the process much easier. You can also buy pre-slotted fingerboards for your project, which makes it even easier!
Carving the neck
First you use a rasp to grind away a bunch of wood until the shape of the neck starts to emerge. Then you use finer carving tools and sandpaper to shape it to your liking. Here we're creating two slots to mark the final thickness at the top and the bottom of the neck. This site has a great example of the whole neck-carving process.
Once the depths are marked, it's time to shape the heel
Adding wood by gluing is so much easier than shaping wood by carving. If you remove too much wood, you can ruin more than your day! The heel can take different shapes, but it needs to be smooth and make sure the higher frets are available for the player. Stoll Guitars of Germany has a nice article about the Spanish heel, a more difficult, traditional approach.
Silky smooth!
As with the body, the final touch on the neck before finishing is to sand, sand, sand! Here's the unfinished wood after hours of carving and sanding, ready for finishing. Building a guitar takes a lot of patience! Classical Guitar Delcamp is a great site for conversations in the classical guitar community, where you can connect with players and builders. Here's a thread where folks debate the bolt-on vs. Spanish heel question.
Now that the neck is finished, it is ready to attach
At this point, there is fine, detailed work required to ensure that the fit between the neck and body is clean and tight. Careful sanding to shape the connection point is critical to making a nice looking instrument. Here's more info about neck assembly from a shop that sells guitar building kits.
Nice fit, ready to bolt-on!
I've smoothed and sanded the connection point and the angles are all set! This guitar is nearing the finish line! The neck angle is critical to the guitar's playability. As with all woodworking, measure and verify repeatedly before cutting or sanding away material. This article discusses the importance of getting the neck angle right.
But wait, let's glue on the bridge first
The bridge is cut and carved from a small hunk of ebony, a gorgeous, dark wood. To glue it on, measure and mark the area on the soundboard where it will live, then gently sand away the finish to reveal raw wood. Distribute glue evenly on the bottom of the bridge, then clamp it into place. How do you clamp something like this in the middle of the guitar body? I'm glad you asked! Click here to see a Klemmsia clamp.
Before finishing the bolt-on process, I used a straight edge to verify the neck angle
If you actually want to play your guitar, the neck angle is incredibly important. Since I've already discussed the neck angle, why don't you check out John Bogdanovich's website? He's a great luthier whose site has fantastic information about guitars and guitar building.
And there it is! My guitar is strung-up and ready to play!
...and it actually sounds great! Here's another guitar building workshop in Chicago, why don't you book a class and have some fun building your own?