Your first build - how'd it go

[Len McIntosh]

Recent posts talk about their first build, weve all been there.
What do you remember mostly of your first masterpiece?
In my case I decided to totally finish the inside, to let the sound waves reflect rather than get absorbed. FYI never repeated this in subsequent builds.
I still have this guitar, kind of, the neck is now on an experimental baritone (new fingerboard obviously) and the body is mated to a four string neck (not a tenor).

[Patrick Hanna]

Mine was more than twenty years ago. It was a classical. Construction went okay, but I had some cosmetic issues with fills around the rosette and with the binding. I got better at those things. It played and sounded fine. Years later, the bridge cracked at the saddle slot. Consulting with the experts here and elsewhere, I learned that I had made the bridge too narrow ahead of the slot. It couldn't support the constant torque of the saddle. That would have been an easy fix. About the same time, the back destroyed itself. I had used very well aged and seasoned (but wildly figured) crotch grain walnut there. In spite of being very old, kiln dried and acclimated for years to my home, over time the wood began to ripple and twist in several directions until it finally cracked itself along the back strip line. It's the weirdest looking failure you can imagine.

[Steven Smith]

My first was an electric and it looks nice on the wall. My first acoustic, a walnut/sitka OM from scratch, came out much better than the next several did. Probably because I followed directions instead of trying my own ideas. I still play that first acoustic a lot, it's a keeper.

[Eric Baack]

I've only built electrics. My first was a Les Paul imitation with a bolt on (strat style) neck. It came out ok. I lost a chunk of wood on the router table trying to shape the first top cap and that got scrapped. The finish left a lot to be desired so it is stripped off and I'm assembling the stuff to vacuum bag a really nice looking flame maple veneer on there.

[Freeman Keller]

I must have blind stupid luck because my first turned out very well and after nine years is still my daily player. A kit, so I didn't have to worry about bending sides or mitering the fretboard, but I had enough challenges. I wouldn't change a thing



(that's supposed to show serial number 001)

[john hale]

Not that well look at the link

http://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/view ... ilit=build

[Ed Haney]

The end result of my first build was very good, but the time it took (3+ years) was way too long. It was a scratch build where all the woods except the top and linings were resawn by me (i.e. back, sides, blocks, neck, bindings, fretboard, bridge, etc.). I also built the shop, bought equipment and tools including dust collection and then built the jigs, molds, bender, etc which took a lot of time. It is Honduran mahogany with Sitka top, maple bindings and trim, rosewood book-matched fretboard and bridge.

[Ed Haney]

Thanks to Barry Daniels who helped with much of the neck carving on my first build. Barry and Matt Jacobs were very helpful to talk things through on finishing and other areas.

I wish they were both closer than 60 miles away from me!

[Bryan Bear]

I was recently talking here about my first but I'll add here too. I had always been fascinated by how guitars went together and secretly wanted to make one. My assumption was that this was not the type of thing people could just do. I had zero woodworking experience so the notion of me doing it seemed even more ridiculous. One day I happened to be in a music store that carries all sorts of folk instruments and this woman was talking about the mountain dulcimers (I had never heard of them). Something about the simplicity of the drones and "missing" frets fascinated me. Then when I learned that historically they were hand made by people who didn't have instruments, out of whatever they had around my mind began to change (but only just a little). I confessed my desire to make instruments to my wife (then fiance) and she asked "then why don't you?" hearing it put like that, I didn't have an answer.

So I bought some tools and some wood (non of which would be recommended for this hobby, but what did I know). I had no skills and no plan but I did have spare time. I spent a lot of time trying to dream up ways around the various operations that I thought I would never be able to do. In hindsight, this time would have been better spent practicing those steps with more traditional methods. I saw a few things on the Internet and dreamed up a dulcimer that is kind of a cross between a strumstick and a Martin backpacker.

But before I started that project I had to learn to use chisels and saws and the stuff I bought. I started practicing with the tools (sadly with no instruction) and through trial and error (heavier helpings of the latter) I began practicing the operations I thought would be needed to make the instrument I was planing. Oddly enough, the scraps I was working on kept turning out okay and ended up actually being put together into that first instrument. When it was done, I was amazed and delighted! It played and the notes were in tune. I was hooked! The instrument itself was way overbuilt, quiet and not particularly nice sounding (I didn't know any of these things at the time though). I began immediately planning and making a more sophisticated version.

Around that time, my wife got me a copy of C&N's book and I found the MIMF. My instruments improved quite a bit after I began getting some direction in my planning and learning! I got a lot of help from people here many of them don't even know it as I learned mostly by lurking and reading the library. This really is a great resource!

[Aaron Helt]

I remember that it had many flaws, but I was very proud of it anyway. The sense of achievement was strong, and kicked off an appetite for this addiction. I took it to work (I work in a large design engineering dept) and all of my co-workers were amazed. It was a blast.
My confidence was so high, for number 2, I ordered premium, high flame Koa (LMI). Well, that one ended up trashed and I realized then... I had gotten pretty lucky on number 1!

[Barry Daniels]

You kids are so lucky (just kidding). My first build in the mid 1970's was pre-internet, stew-mac, or the idea that sharing knowledge was a good thing. I had been seeking any scrap of information for years and finally found Irving Sloan's book which got me started. My first guitar looked OK but it was over-braced and was quite muted. But it was a start and as time went on, I found what I needed to build a real guitar.

[Bryan Bear]

You kids are so lucky (just kidding). My first build in the mid 1970's. . .

What a coincidence, I was built in the mid 1970's. <ducking and running>

[Steven Smith]

You kids are so lucky (just kidding). My first build in the mid 1970's. . .

What a coincidence, I was built in the mid 1970's. <ducking and running>

I don't know if you're over-braced but you don't seem to be too muted In a good way, of course.

[Bryan Bear]

I don't think I am over-braced. . . judging from the bellying. . .

[Patrick Hanna]

Bryan,
After checking back in and reading about your discussion about instrument building with your then-fiancee, let me just say that you chose a very fine, supportive life partner there. ...and I chose equally well!
Patrick

[Bryan Bear]

You got that right Patrick and good on ya for scoring one too!

[Jim McConkey]

Ages ago in high school I was in the library one day and a mountaini dulcimer in a book on folk instruments caught my eye, so I set out to build on. I got lumber somwhere, resawed it in shop at school, and begged, borrowed, or built what few other tools I needed. Jumped right in and taught myself how to bend sides on a homemade hot pipe, and to use a homemade scraper. The instrument was rather plain, but sturdy. It has traveled many thousands of miles with me through glaciers and deserts, been submerged underwater for hours in a flood, bumped, and bruised. Though I have since built a number of other instruments, some much nicer and more refined, after nearly 40 years, that instrument is still my primary axe and I still play it preference to just about everything else.

[Randy Roberts]

My first was almost totally accidental.
A local repair guy had designed and developed a nifty little travel guitar and the local newspaper had done a full page story on him and it. Our son had left for college a few months prior, and my wife and I were in the throws of empty nest syndrome. I got to thinking that his guitar might make a nice Christmas present for said son, and stopped up to talk to him.

While talking, I decided to ask if I might do a little sanding or something to feel like I had a hand in it. He had generated orders for 14 of them from the newspaper article, all of them for Christmas presents, and as of two weeks before Thanks giving had not started any of them.

He looked over his glasses at me straight in the eye and said “If you want to have a hand in it, you build the !~@ #$% ^& * @#$%^.” One thing led to another and I would go up to his shop each night after work and we’d go till 2 or 3 in the morning, working to crank out the @#$@ #$ @#$#$%s. I can’t imagine a better way to get started. There was no time to stop and doubt myself, he knew what he was doing, and each step was repeated multiple times in a short space of time. We ended up with the last one going out the door at 5:45 Christmas Eve.

I would not have even thought of trying to do something like that myself, and it opened this marvelous door of endless learning about something I just find fascinating in every respect.
And after 13 years I still can’t play a lick. But now that I can build I don’t really care.

[Aaron Helt]

What a cool story!

[G. M. Seigmund]

Looking back it went very well, considering how many times it almost went in the stove. I remember stringing it up, I was working on the nut and reaming bridge pins and got the low E on and was really amazed at how horrible it sounded got all the strings on did a rough preliminary set up and played it for a couple of hours and it was not all that bad. Anyway left it out on the couch that night and the next morning someone/something had flipped a switch it sounded heavenly. Fit and finish left quite a bit to be desired, it looked good from 5' away.
My daughter who sings and was just learning to play grabbed it and did not let go, she placed third in her sixth grade middle school talent show, second in the seventh grade and won in the eight grade with that guitar. She has since swiped my 13 fret Nick Lucas special but what do ya do:)