Official Luthiers Forum!

OK this is going to be my first build. I plan to build a Gibson L-00 or as close as I can get given this is my first attempt at a guitar. I have the plan. I have finished building the bending machine and plan to use 3 200 watt bulbs for heat and I have just completed the two molds.

I bought some maghogany for back and sides for 10 dollars each and I got a piece of maghogany also at 10 dollars for the neck. I have a piece of Sitka spruce for the top and most likely will use Sitka spruce for the bracing.

I am going to need lots of help both in building this guitar from scratch and also with posting pictures as my computer skills are very limited, don't know how to post pictures,etc. I will be building the jigs as I go along also.


I am in the general Seattle area and I am wonderinng if there are other folks who will be building in this area so we could put our heads together if we get stuck. I know there will be many forum members who will be willing to help also.

This should be really fun, Thanks for the opportunity to do this,
Chuck

Yes, tooling/jigging up is quite time consuming. My daughter's guitar took about a year and a half because I was building jigs when I got to the point I needed them. Number 2 is moving much more quickly. This forum is great because so many people share their methods and there are so many different ways to skin the cat- radiusing a fretboard for instance. I looked at several different jigs for each operation and chose to build the ones that I understood clearly and was confident in my ability to build and use. Good luck with your build!

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Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgement.

Three 200 watt bulbs is probably more than you need, I use two 150's and one 100 watt and it takes about 15 to 20 minutes before it's hot enough to begin to scorch.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Well I don't want to scorch the sides for sure. What are other people who use light bulbs using in their sidebenders?
Chuck

Now that I think about it, I don't remember seeing anyone else using light bulbs anymore, everyone is using a blanket or bending on a pipe. I couldn't afford a blanket when I started, but I've had such success with my light bulbs and clothes iron that I see no reason to "upgrade" to a blanket now. There's some decent pics of my bending setup in my Challange 2 thread.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

I want to glue up the back and the sides here soon. I am planning on using my jointer to do this. Do I run the wood through my drum sander first to get it smooth, not taking it down to final thickness, and then run it though the jointer? Then glue it up and after it dries put it back through the drum sander on a sled to get it to the final thickness

Thanks Chuck

That's what I do chuck. Just thickness it a little to get them down to .15" or so then join an final thickness once the area are together.

I took a gander at your bending setup...looks really cool! I think I'm going to try that out.