Official Luthiers Forum!

So here are pictures of my first build It’s not quite done. I still need to put a finish on the neck and headstock and need to finish carving the nut, but it’s playable so I’m having a hard time getting back to work on it. When I started this, I figured I’d end up with a guitar, and I hoped it would be at least as good as the Honer my brother gave me when he gave up playing in fourth grade. I am amazed at the sound and the playability. It's great and I love it. (I’ll make a second thread for my one concern.)

I wanted to thank everyone here on the forum for taking the time to share your vast expertise. I have learned so much from you all. I also wanted to thank Robbie O. Without him there’s no way I would have finished. You’re a great teacher Robbie! I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I started. Your DVD and your class were spot on. Now I’ve got a great guitar and I’m about to start my second. This is so exciting!

I don’t want to use up the evening listing the flaws, however I have certainly learned a few things that I suspect might be of use to new builders so I thought I’d make a short list of things to be aware of when building your first guitar. (And let me be clear. Robbie is not responsible for my errors. These are all myself not paying attention, failing to write something down, forgetting something he said, or my figuring that since I’m so smart, I thought of a better way and didn’t follow instructions.)

1. When the plans call out a certain dimension, you don’t necessarily want to cut it that size. By the time you sand and radius and glue on your kerfing and reradius, you’re going to lose a chunk of wood out of there. Plan ahead and cut big. You can always make it smaller, but adding wood back doesn’t work so well.
2. Take your time. Every thought you have that begins, “Well, this would be faster if…” is probably wrong. You want fast, walk down to Target and buy a Honer.
3. Clean up your glue squeeze-out while it’s pretty fresh. I don’t care what all the books and magazines your read say about waiting and scraping it off later. It’s way easier earlier.
4. Use lots of blue tape and other things to protect your wood. You’re not that awesome. You will slip and it will leave a mark that may or may not be fixable.
5. When you are routing your binding channels, aim for a little on the shallow side. It’s much easier to scrape down your binding to the level of the top than the other way around. Sanding your top down to match your binding will cause you much grief. (This was probably my biggest mistake. My top is really thin in some places.)
6. Before fitting your neck, check out Hesh’s tutorial. Remember that the heel cap will hide your shoulder relief and make life easier. (Exception here to #2 – trust me I’m really smart. )
7. Radius your neck before any inlay or at least keep the upcoming sanding in mind when drilling holes for your dots so they are deep enough that you don’t sand through them.
8. Shellac all the light colored wood before your start waving around the dark tinted pore filler. (Also remember the blue tape.)
9. Every time you glue, cut, bend or do just about anything check it about 20 times to make sure you’ve got it just the way you want it. Dry fit. Dry fit. Dry fit.
10. Don’t touch spinning sharp things.
11. Taking a decent picture of a guitar is tougher than I thought.

I’ll post the pictures in a minute as soon as I figure out how.

Miek

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Mike Lindstrom

Let's see if I'm smart enough to do this.

Oh yeah -- standard LMI kit and LMI OM plans. I didn't know what any of those words were so I had no idea what changing something might have resulted in.

Miek

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Mike Lindstrom

Nice looking guitar!

Your tips are well written. Now if I could just remember to do that myself

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Reguards,

Ken H

Miek she looks great and better then my first guitar looked!!!!

My list of what I had learned or would do better or different on the next one was far longer than yours too so be proud - you did great!!!

One thing that I always get a chuckle out of is that a first time builder is amazed that their guitar sounds as good as it does. I was too. I was also amazed that the neck did not fold and hit me in the face........ Seriously........

And you covered all bases in your post including the most important one - that you are hooked and building a second.

Great work and you should be very proud. Do you have any idea how few people in the general population can and have built a guitar?

Nice job!

You made some great observations that I'm sure will help you with future builds, but this one looks great.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

My list is way longer than that too. Those are just the ones I figured could be most useful to new people. One of the best things about doing it as a class was that every time I messed something up, or saw someone else make a mistake, Robbie was there to teach us how to fix it. Yeah, my guitar is not perfect, but I'm glad I made mistakes. If everything had gone together like legos, I wouldn't have learned much at all. Now I'm much more confident that the next one will come together fine and I have more tools in my bag for when I need them.

Miek

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Mike Lindstrom

Miek,
Great job! So you graduated out of the king wing nuts class eh? Robbie is a great teacher, and he is responsible for the ever increasing size of the CO Luthiers Organization. Many people who take his class to just build one guitar, end up going on to build many more. Look forward to seeing what's next. Now go enjoy that new guitar! This thread really is a testament to Robbie's fine ability to lead and teach a very difficult class. Way to go Robbie

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Tracy
http://www.luthiersuppliers.com