4-string CBG building diary
I spent 60 hours over 28 days in January and February of 2013 building my 3rd cigar box guitar (this one for my wife Katy.) Here's a diary of that process...
Day 1 - It begins. Planning...
Day 1 - Cutting scarf joint
Day 1 - Scarf joint cleanup
Day 1 - Clamped scarf joint
Day 2 - scarf joint cleanup
Day 2 - Gluing veneer onto headstock
Day 3 - neck spacer prep, fretboard centerline and planning
Day 3 - Workshop audience
Day 4 - narrowed the fretboard to allow for the fancy new tortoise-shell binding
Day 5 - rough cut neck width
Day 5 - glued fretboard to spacer
Day 6 - Marking for fret markers
Day 6 - holes drilled, dowels installed
Day 6 - cut dowels level to fretboard
Day 7 - finished building a sled for sanding a radius onto the fretboard
Day 8 - photoshop mockup to plan the shape of the head and sound holes
Day 9 - marking sound holes
Day 11 - bridge and saddle
Day 12 - no progress, but all packed up to work at in-laws this weekend
Day 13 - travel day to in-laws. Arrived to find that hardware came in the mail
Day 14 - cutting antler from Dad’s 1984 Wyoming mule deer to serve as the nut
Day 14 - cutting fret slots
Day 14 - sanding a radius curve into the fretboard
Day 14 - 10 grades of sandpaper (60-1200) to produce a nice shine on the fretboard
Day 15 - found a matching band for the headstock
Day 16 - no progress, but found some great new boxes
Day 17 - I found a bigger version of the same beautiful Flor de las Antillas box, so I’m going to use that instead. The smaller one will become a ukulele
Day 17 - tortoise-shell binding
Day 17 - braces and neck fitting
Day 18 - drilling holes for the strings
Day 18 - realized that I had cut the braces incorrectly, so had to restart. Much better now. I love the countersunk screws.
Day 19 - fit plate for strings into back of box
Day 20 - shaped the head and driller the tuner holes
Day 21 - drilling fret marker holes
Day 21 - inserting fret markers into binding
Day 21 - shaped and (mostly) sanded binding and fret markers
Day 21 - big step - gluing fretboard to the neck
Day 22 - rough cut neck thickness
Day 22 - lots of rasping/filing to shape neck
Day 22 - redrew center line. More rasping.
Day 22 - after about an hour of sanding (up to 1200 grit), it’s soooooo smooth
Day 23 - putting that RIT education to work. Oh xylene, what would I do without you?
Day 24 - lots more sanding, then the first coat of tung oil (50% tung/50% mineral.)
Day 25 - many, many coats
Day 26 - masking and more tung oil
Day 27 - tuner installation
Day 27 - string ferrules installed
Day 28 - string grooves cut into nut. Strings on!
Day 28 - 99% done! All that’s left is the addition of the cigar ring on the head, but that has to wait until the tung oil on the head dries up a bit.
