Official Luthiers Forum!

I'd like to ask all of you what your first build was like and what mistakes you learned from it. At the moment I'm hating superglues (CA) I'm starting my first and my rosette left something to be desired so I filled the gaps with wood dust and superglue and it's wicked up the spruce end grain and left amber marks in places I nearly sanded through the rosette trying to get rid of it at the moment I feel like buying a new top, but won't this is a first so there'll be more mistakes on the way and it's a learning process!

Like hoping my slightly warped back would pull straight on bracing! It's 90% there and I hope the rest will sand out.

So all in all my first is gonna look a bit of a dog!

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Formerly JJH

I learn more from my mistakes than my successes

Well, I was really, really nervous, and ... Oh! You mean Guitar! Well, let's see, I was really, really nervous, and .. geez, seems about the same!

Yes, CA on top wood. You goofed bad.

How is the back warped? Is this prior to jointing and joining, after, or after bracing? Do you have control over humidity? This is very important. You don't want to be building while you are fighting humidity changes.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Now that I think about it, both my firsts were about the same too!

I barely remember the mistakes themselves, but I do remember getting really stressed over them.

Had to sand the top pretty thin in one spot to get a ding levelled that wouldn't quite steam out. Messed with the neck angle quite a bit, so the neck heel looks a bit short. It all comes back to me now..... Didn't keep the sides aligned in the outside form, so now if you set the guitar on its side on a flat surface, it rocks like a table with a short leg. By the time I got the sides of the headstock straight and smooth, it was a bit smaller than I wanted. The back was too stiff, so I shaved the back braces and got a fuller tone out of it. Dropped the peghead inlay somewhere along the way. I was frantic looking for it until I found it the next day stuck to a piece of tape on the bottom of my shoe.

Good news is it plays well and sounds good to my ears.

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I have been staying out of this thread because it's really, really hard for me to not say something that is both stupid and possibly offensive to some..........

But now that I have that out of the way.........

My first was the largest source of personal pride at the time in my entire life. After I built my second my first sucked...... By the tenth I was absolutely ashamed of it and hid it but no matter where I hid it it kept jumping out at me in actuality and figuratively speaking..........

By the time I built my 16th I threw my first away and have not been haunted by it since. I will add that it was so bad that the night before my trash pick-up I wrapped it up carefully in a garbage bag (alone....) with the head stock sticking out. I placed it gingerly with my trash so that if someone wanted it they could take it.

The next morning my trash was gone as usual and the guitar had been taken out of the garbage bag, inspected by probably the trash person, and placed on the grass outside my home and left...... It was still in my life....... Sony (my dog) and I jumped in the car with the stinkin guitar and drove to the nearest commercial dumpster and under penalty of law we deposited it in a dumpster and it was never seen again......

jjh,
I just finished my first acoustic....there are so many mistakes....so many....But each one was a learning experience and each was a chance to give up.I built bad jigs...broke a side bending it ....cut to far with the binding channel....but...I didn't give up and now I have a playable....slightly odd looking guitar.That sounds pretty ok to me.It was a great time and i am busy planning the next.Each mistake i made had to be made..i couldn't read about it...I had to do it.guitar building is a wonderful hands on thing....reading is not building......but I do plan on doing more reading before the next build. above all...have fun.
big John

Hesh you are a a a ..heartless monster! I could never do that to my first.

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Build log

My first is stashed away, with it's dodgy finish, the gaps in the binding, the 14th fret hump....(NOBODY expects the 14th Fret Hump!?!!)

What lessons had I learned? For the sake of bandwidth, let's keep it short. The guitar was rushed.

AT the time i was thrilled.

by the time I'd made 5 I realised how bad it actually was.

I'm teetering on the brink of stripping the parts (it's a fretless electric bass) for another build

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My soundclick xx luthier blog xx luthier soundclick

My first turned out...not Too bad but Too heavy. Its built like a tank One bad mistake I made was routing the binding channel and slipping up onto the top, Twice. Only 16th" of a ding but it stands out to me like a black eye. I too,had a hard time with the dovetail neck joint. I wouldn't recommend that on a first guitar to anyone but I'm glad I learned it. I think most of us overbuild our first couple of guitars. I Am amazed at some of the first guitars being built and shown here on the OLF. Some guys get it right , right from the start!

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

I see lots of common issues here and thought that I would list what sucked on my first guitar.

Pore Filling - I had not discovered epoxy finishing resin yet.....
Dove tail neck joint - like Dave it was hard and mine did not turn out well
CA stains on the top from not sealing the end grain......
Nut slots were not filed at 1/2 of the head stock angle (7-8 degrees) caused buzzing from the bridge area....
Nut slots were too wide - I used an X-zacto saw only and had no nut slot files
Fretting - loose frets, poorly dressed frets
Neck angle too shallow making the need for a short saddle
14th fret hump......
Saddle was not snug and was my 3rd attempt at a bone saddle
Finish was terrible - rattle can nitro, open pores, buffing compounds got in the pores leaving white spots....
Bridge not fitted to top before being glued and later lifted - had to be fitted and re-glued
Bridge pins not snuggly and properly fitted and had different heights
Neck shape left something to be desired - it was not fast and comfortable
No label or headstock logo which turned out to be a very good thing

But..... when I strung it up and it did not snap in half and I sat down to play it despite the buzzing I could hear deep bass and good trebles and that was enough for me to go into denial and love it, at least until the next one was built.

My first was a 1.5 year project. I received an OM kit from John Hall and then decided to upgrade by doing a bound headstock and fretboard. Both caused significant delays due to having to do more than a few things over again. I also went against conventional wisdom by using HHG. I used HHG all over but should not have used it in adhering the FB to the neck...I got a severe backbow which required more time for correction work. I also learned how to remove braces and reinstall them!

I made lots mistakes along the way which led to lots of re-do's and corrections. I look back on this now and realize that taking the time to correct mistakes and making everything as perfect as I was capable of doing at the time was good training for the discipline and patience that is needed to make quality guitars. Since I had absolutely no prior woodworking skills, I actually wrote out each operation and both mentally and physically practiced the technique before going live.

Finishing was a project unto itself. I used the black, messy pore filler and kept at it until all was filled properly. I sprayed Nitro in my garage and worked at it forever until I was able to get it right. It was far from perfect but at the time I was proud of the results after all of the wet sanding and polishing steps.

Most importantly, it didn't collapse once the strings were installed. Now, after 5 years, my son still plays it almost daily and while it sounds better than a factory guitar, it's still a bit tighter than subsequent guitars.

Good luck with your first and take solace in the fact that we all make mistakes and correcting them is all part of the learning process. Most of all...have fun!

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

The thing that sticks out the most to me was the incredible difficulty fretting. I had a Martin fretboard and some wire from Grizzly. Who knew the slots were too thin? I thought it was supposed to be that difficult.

Of course, its heavier than my Yairi 12 string...

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Gabriel Regalbuto
Carlsbad, California
Freedom 35!

i finished it 6 years ago and i play it every day! i know i got lucky, but it sounds great. now the details.

the joining, thicknessing, rosette and bracing all went surprisingly well. dull chisels though. so carving the braces was more of a chore than the pleasure it is now.

bent the sides over a pipe and freaked me out but worked.

routing the channel for purfs and binding was a royal pain with a dremel. bending the ebony binding over a pipe was a disaster. so the binding/purf job still looks awful.

the headstock is asymetrical, but not by design. it turned into a comedy of errors - all of which have nothing to do with the sound, but continue to be an embarrassment visually.

the 14th fret has the hump, but just a small one. so the difference came out of the tops of frets 14 - 20. not the right way to do it, but it got me playing buzz free.

the worst of it all was the water based finish. the body is barely okay, but the neck always feels gummy. really bad in summer.

the real problem i've got is that this guitar really does sound great, but i think it would be a huge amount of work to strip the finish and make a new neck and rebind it. all told it feels like it wouldn't be any faster than building a new guitar at this point. so i live with it.

phil

As time goes buy the cosmetic challenges of my first seem to have less and less significance to me and the sound seems to just get better and better, but what I've come to like most is the overall feeling of handwork in every part of it. My first was not the product of jigs, and radius dishes. There were no heat blankets or bending forms. No outside mold. A freshly planed 2 x 4 was all the solera needed. Power tools never had the final say. And a factory finish was never in the plans.

I wanted to build a steel string, I wanted a bolt on neck. I imagine plastic binding looked pretty good to me. Taylor was my ideal. I knew nothing about woodworking. I was not skilled with my hands.

I was very fortunate to connect with Al Carruth and Tom Knatt who taught guitar building a couple of days a week at their shop. It was all a lot harder than I ever imagined. Everything from sharpening a plane blade to, well everything. I had no idea what flat really meant, let alone square. For most of us students, sandpaper was our friend, they taught us about their friends Mr. Plane and Mrs. Scraper. Tom could be tough, but I didn't care, I wanted to learn. Al had a more gentle bench side manner, he knew when to push and he knew when to back off. He was always very kind, even when, to my horror, I dropped HIS plane on the floor.

It took me three years to finish my first this way, almost all of the work being done in their shop on Saturdays. Somewhere in that time Al and Tom went their separate ways. I followed Al.

Al listened to my Taylor ideas and then he steered me to a Spanish heel. He gave me some Brazilian Rosewood for binding. Taught every aspect of hand building. And at the right moments always gently replaced unskilled hands with skilled ones. Al taught his method and theories for plate tuning and helped tune every student guitar. Old school pore filling and a thin brushed varnish finish added beauty and character.

I didn't end up with anything like the Taylor I imagined when I started. Along the way my ideas about guitars, and craft changed a lot. And I got to build a guitar and have an experience I will always appreciate.

When I was in college, the library had a copy of Sloan's book on classical guitar construction. I read that book cover to cover and thought "cool, I'll have to do this some day". 25 years later, I'm browsing in my local book store that found Cumpiano and Natelson. I bought that book and read it over and over again for a year. I also found the mimf. From there I learned that there are easier ways to do some of the things that seemed hard to me as they were described in Cumpiano. I bought a kit of parts from LMI. That's the one where nothing is pre-made except the bridge, linings and hardware. I ordered a preslotted fretboard and started building. Every step of the way, I chose the option that I thought entailed the least risk. I built a mold, a Fox bender, gobar deck, and bought a bunch of lutherie tools.

I chose to use the threaded brass inserts and a flush mounted heel. My Fox bender almost caught fire from the lightbulbs. Lining the mold and the insides with aluminum tape solved that. I didn't thin the side enough and I had to re-bend them three times before they would stay bent.

Carving the neck turned out to be the hardest part. There didn't seem to be any jigs that would help and I used a spoke shave. Trying to shave down a hump in the neck would quickly remove wood from the neck right next to where I was shaving. I'm positive that the cutter never touch that part of the neck.

I used the small cylinder shaped StewMac binding cutter that mounts to a Dremel tool. I'd read that a climb cut was necessary to avoid tear out. I took the Dremel and slowly moved it into the side of the guitar and gently move it every so slightly with the rotation of the bit. Zwippt! My Dremel tool was gone! I could hear it whirring off in the corner of the room. Somehow I managed to cut my binding channel but it was very uneven. If I were to redo anything on the guitar, it would be the binding.

After I glued up the box, I learned about humidity control. Winter arrived and my center seam in the top opened up. (A lot). I tried to put in a spline and that seem to be OK though you see the line.

Fitting the neck was a nightmare. The holes for the bolt didn't line up with the inserts. The inserts stripped. If I had a fretboard that laid flat on the top, the saddle would have to be lower than the bridge. I coudn't get a smooth seam between the heal and the body. Eventually, I got the neck attached so that it would be possible to string it up.

I used Target PSL with a brush for the finish and LMI's water based pore filler. I couldn't get the finish to level without sanding through right next to the area where I was trying to level. I still have that problem by the way.

After I strung it up and let it settle in for a few days, the guitar sounded pretty good. Was it the best sounding guitar I've ever heard? Not even close but it wasn't the worst either. I played that guitar for two years.

I had made the neck too thin and the truss rod slot caused a crack in the back of the neck. The thin neck deflected too much when the strings were on it. With only three strings on they would be actually touching the frets. By the time I had all the strings on the action was too high.

The guitar is in the closet and I'll leave the final judgment up to the historians.

Yep I to will give the warning to seal the rosette and binding area and end grain with shellac prior to ever using CA. This has be talked about many times CA will leach into end grain instantly and not much you can do once it happens. Also you can never get dust and any glue to look like spruce. May be time for burst finish?

My first scratch build was a Koa top with IRW b&S I still love that guitar but it was naturally over built and a tad heavy. I under routed the channels for the binding and purfling and this caused my binding thickness to be very thin. And I miss cut my tuner holes to close to the edge of the peghead and the bushing washers touch the edge. All lessons well learned.

I built my first guitar for a friend who is a southpaw.
So, once finished, I couldn't play the thing.
It was more successful than I had a right to hope, but not so much as a number of incredible firsts that have been displayed here.
My biggest goof was the neck joint, second was the bracing. I followed Sloane's steel string book pretty faithfully.
The top was over-braced, and the neck was impossible to remove.
That latter point only became an issue when the guitar came back a few years ago needing a new neck. Had to saw off the original neck, and then reverse-engineer a bolt-on assembly with the new neck.
But it was fun to revisit the old thing.
Oh yes, the finish was pretty unsuccessful as well....

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com