Fanned Fret Guitar

I've only ever posted smaller projects here, so I thought I would share something more serious that I just completed. This is the 7th stringed instrument I've built, and the second guitar. I started designing it back in October, and strung it up for the first time on June fifth. It was about 170 hours of work from start to finish, and I tried to limit myself to hand tools as much as possible. I designed and built every part of this guitar by hand except for the tuning machines.

The top is Carpathian Spruce, and the back and sides are Indian Rosewood. The neck is maple, and all of the fittings are ebony and cocobolo. This guitar also has full abalone purfling, and a 12th fret inlay inspired by victorian era banjos. It also has a secondary sound hole on the bass side of the body which allows the player to hear themselves more clearly.

Most notably, this guitar is designed around a fanned fret layout where all of the strings are different lengths. This means that the frets aren't parallel, and it was a much more challenging design process than anything I had ever built.
You can read more about fanned frets and the benefits of the design here: Fanned Frets

You can hear me playing the finished guitar here:

Some photos of the build process:

The fret slots cut and the floral ornament inlayed in pearl at the 12th fret. It took about 4 hours just to cut the mother of pearl:


The mold, made out of a scrap piece of glulam:


The sound hole cut and the abalone sound hole rosette inlayed:


The sides drying in the mold after steam bending by eye:


The neck block is a tricky bit of shaping:


Profiling the sides and blocks to match the slight arch of the top and back:


The back braces glued and carved:


The top braces are a complex lattice of lap joints, and need to be extremely light and strong:


The top joined to the sides:


The channel for my logo inlay routed out:


The first fret installed:


A cold winter's day of fretwork:


The beginning of carving the neck with rasps and files:


Inlaying the abalone purfling on the top. The binding (outermost layer) is cocobolo:


Filling the pores in the rosewood back:


Carving the bridge:


Leveling and polishing the finish with micro-mesh and 3M Finesse-it compound:


I'm quite happy with how the finish turned out:


Thanks for looking! I strongly encourage anyone considering building a guitar to give it a try. It's a great combination of a bunch of different tool skills and processes, and it's an incredibly rewarding thing to complete.