| Blog series by FreddyS | updated 11-20-2012 06:11 AM | 6 parts | 61506 reads | 24 comments total |
Part 1: The beginning
Hi everyone, finally I come back with a blog for a little project I been doing in my free time for the last 2 weeks. As it was bound to happen I think, having been a professional musician for nearly 20 years and now interested in woodworking as a hobby among some other things, finally bit the bullet and started building a CBG (cigar box guitar), and this is the short story, short because there really is not too much to tell as the build can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be....
Part 2: More neck work
Hi again, this time I’ll show you the extra work I did with the neck: You can see in the pic the small cigar box I got for the cbg, a Romeo y Julieta brand, cedar plywood, it is almost too small for the scale I choose (25”) but I will use it anyway, time will tell if I need to replace it. Here I did another “first timer”, a pattern jig to cut a nice shape into the headstock, used double sided tape to attach the pattern to the headstock and routed away… and...
Part 3: Tail and bridge
Hi guys, this weekend I worked on the tail and the bridge:The tail got some planing and a shape routing, I didn’t liked a lot the first pattern in the headstock so I changed it, forgot to take pics but is the same shape as in the tail just flipped, now I really like it. Then I drilled the holes for the strings, you can see aluminum rivet heads in there, to protect the wood from the strings, will se how that works. Also I made the bridge with some spare tzalam (aka caribbean walnut...
Part 4: Fingerboard and box work
Hi again, this weekend was slow because all the fingerboard work, let’s see: Slots for the fret line position inlays ready, made by hand with a hacksaw going really slow to avoid any mistakes. It may be a couple a little bit bad, but noting too obvious :) All the maple inlays ready to be glued and trimmed Inlays closeup Fitting each inlay Inlays done! And now side dots, made with flux core solder, drill each hole, fill it with a small length of solder, melt it with a s...
Part 5: Fingerboard glued to the neck
Hi there, this weekend another project got my attention for a couple of hours so I guess I’ll need another weekend to finish the guitar. So, I could only glue the fingerboard to the neck and apply the first hand of polycrylic finish but I’m almost at the end of the project, yeah! Getting ready for the fingerboard gluing: This time I went with yellow glue to have more time to set the clamps, it worked as expected An hour later, after cleaning some glue run-outs the neck...
Part 6: This cigar box guitar is done but I think the journey just began!
Hi there guys, I had another long weekend (revolution day over here) so I managed to finish my first cgb, whee! So, first I did the last polycrylic coat(satin) and wet sanded with 1200 grit, the plan was to do some polish to the finish… but it turns out that, when wet sanding this finish it looks and feels just like the necks in 3 of my factory made guitars – natural matte look, and smooth to the touch- which I love a lot so no polish needed!, and that means a lot less elbow gr...
