Thread: 3 String Cigar Box Guitar

D,

Maple is good, mahogany is good, even cedar will do. The nice thing about maple is that you won't need to glue on a fingerboard.

If you're looking to make frets, you'll need fret wire and a saw with the appropriate kerf so that the wire sits properly in the slot. If you're doing bottle neck slide or something like that, you're going to have the action really high and won't need wire frets, just the markings to go by...a lot easier.

There's a million other things to consider, depending on how accurate you want to be, but there is definitely a need for accuracy in making the neck because the fret spacing determines if the guitar will play the right notes. Making the neck and fretboard is definitely the most arduous part of any guitar. I'm working on an OM size acoustic right now, but time has been precious, so progress is slow.

I would go to your local library and get the following book if they have it. Its big and long, but has a ton of info that will help you along the way

Guitarmaking : Tradition and Technology

William R. Cumpiano

ISBN-10: 0811806405
ISBN-13: 978-0811806404

You can also order it from Amazon for about $35

Originally Posted by osdset

We were great rivals with the early fretted instrument makers who occupied the sixth floor of our building, so we devised a competition two teams of eight students from early fretted and modern fretted , to construct a complete and fully functional acoustic guitar in 24 hours, needless to say my lads trumped early fretted and presented the finished instrument with two hours to spare, to this day I don't know how we did it, that was fourteen years ago and the guitar is still going strong, happy days!

That is nothing short of amazing, considering the amount of work required to build a playable guitar.

I wasn't going to do fret wire just the markers right now frets later

That will work.

Now you have to decide on a scale length and calculate the fret positions.

This will help

Calculating Fret Positions

I was thinking a neck length of 24.5 in as most seem to be that length

Sure, that works and string tension won't be an issue.

do you have a piece of very hard plastic or bone for the nut?

Were you going to angle the headstock?

Do you have machine heads salvaged from an old guitar?

Have all the hardware and pickups

Woo Hoo, you're all set then.

Are you intending to angle the headstock? If you are, I'll give you the easiest way to do it.

You know better than I do about that.

I think that given the really high action for bottleneck slide, you might be able to get away without an angled headstock. Its certainly easier to keep it straight.

Did you get your fret calculations done?

Remember that the scale length is measured from the nut to the saddle. The idea is to locate the saddle on the cigar box first. This will give you an idea of the length of the neck. Mark the fret positions on the neck with pencil and do a trial fit. You want to check that the 12th fret is exactly halfway from the nut to the saddle.