Project Information
My brother used to play guitar, but now no longer has the time to maintain his skills. I found these "Strumstick" guitars online that are designed in a way so that no matter what fret your finger is on, you are always in the same scale so all the notes work together.
I gathered as much info as I could on how to put these things together and started on building 2 of them, one for me and one for my brother. I used paduck for the neck (because people say that it has a good natural tone/resonance, but I cannot hear the difference), purple heart for the top of the body and maple for the back. I found a website that calculates the proper position of all the frets based on the size of the instrument. The frets were pretty easy, make a shallow cut with a narrow kerf handsaw, dab some CA glue, hammer in some fret wire and them trim/sand the excess with a dremil tool.
For a finish I thinned out some clear shellac and wiped on about 8 coats. It's not the most durable finish, but it feels wonderful in the hands and really makes the paduck and purpleheart look good.
The only critical thing I learned from this is that you need to build a bending form for the stick before you glue the face on or it will come out lopsided. I built a prototype out of construction lumber and I had this problem, but after i built the form (seen in the second picture above) I was able to clamp the face on, let it dry, then the face holds everything in the proper shape.
Once it was all put together and strung it's amazing how easy it is to just pick it up and start improvising a jam. I play a little guitar and none of the tabs I know translate over to this, but if you can look at sheet music for a song it's not hard to figure out because the frets just go A,B,C,...G.
I gathered as much info as I could on how to put these things together and started on building 2 of them, one for me and one for my brother. I used paduck for the neck (because people say that it has a good natural tone/resonance, but I cannot hear the difference), purple heart for the top of the body and maple for the back. I found a website that calculates the proper position of all the frets based on the size of the instrument. The frets were pretty easy, make a shallow cut with a narrow kerf handsaw, dab some CA glue, hammer in some fret wire and them trim/sand the excess with a dremil tool.
For a finish I thinned out some clear shellac and wiped on about 8 coats. It's not the most durable finish, but it feels wonderful in the hands and really makes the paduck and purpleheart look good.
The only critical thing I learned from this is that you need to build a bending form for the stick before you glue the face on or it will come out lopsided. I built a prototype out of construction lumber and I had this problem, but after i built the form (seen in the second picture above) I was able to clamp the face on, let it dry, then the face holds everything in the proper shape.
Once it was all put together and strung it's amazing how easy it is to just pick it up and start improvising a jam. I play a little guitar and none of the tabs I know translate over to this, but if you can look at sheet music for a song it's not hard to figure out because the frets just go A,B,C,...G.
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