Official Luthiers Forum!

They say in football that the biggest improvement in a team happens between the first and second games - that in theory the team should be much better in game 2.

Well... I can tell you that I hope that is true in guitar building! I'm not frustrated at all - but boy am I realizing how much easier this will be the 2nd time.

Many of you know about my son and I building 2 guitars with Kevin Gallagher this past May - and have probably read our thread on our first solo build (viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=18446)

I'm just hear to get some feedback from all of you if you can remember your very first build. I'm amazed at how much more pre-planning should have been done that could have saved me difficult steps down the road - and I don't even have the box closed yet! I think I need to think each step our more clearly and have a plan... and then maybe an ordered checklist for that plan.

Example: We decided to bind the soundhole. Well - the braces are already on the top - and I realized I wanted a backplate for the soundhole binding - which meant I needed to cut another soundhole out of some spruce at exactly the same size as the one in the top. Then... I needed to trim the board to fit between the X-brace and top brace, with the backplate sound hole still lining up exactly where it should. Well, I got it all done (almost) and was extremely happy with the results - and was sanding an edge on my belt sander when my piece of wood went shooting into the sander and blowing into pieces. A couple swear words later I regathered my composure and started all over.

I have all kinds of stories like these I could share - none of them actually will effect the final product's quality - just feel like I've "never held a football before".

I have not lost any of my passion for this - just losing some sleep from working too late in the shop.

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P A U L B U R N E R
Burner Guitars

Paul, sounds very normal to me

One thing I did (and still do mentally and sometimes in hard copy) is go over the steps for each process, writing them down in a notebook and going over and over and over and over and....(you get the idea) each process till it's committed to memory. Than when I'm building, I have the note book on my bench and when I think I'm missing a step, I refer back to the notebook.

Take a look at Charlie Hoffman's Step by Step 6 page documentation of guitar building. Years ago I printed this off and just read it over and over and over and.... trying to get it into my memory. Of course I've chosen to do some of my steps in different orders than this, but it's a good detailed list of the steps or process' to guitar making.

Best thing is you're having fun and learning (and staying out of trouble my mother-in-law would always say, but what does she know with TAS and WAS always rearing their ugly head)

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My Facebook Guitar Page

"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

Having only built one guitar, and working on 2 & 3, I think that sequence is one of the most important aspects of building a guitar. If you get ahead of the sequence, it may work, but may also become more difficult, as in binding a sound hole after bracing the top. Having a planned sequence as stated above, by others, will help accomplish the end result with fewer problems.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Paul my friend something that helped me was the realization that I really was clueless as to how a guitar worked and how the builder can impact the tone by the things that we do. With this said I avoided "scope creep" were I had a tendency to want to do new things every time I built a guitar. I realized that it was more important at least to me to try to understand more about how a guitar works and limited my variables in each build to a few each time. I even built identical guitars but with different woods to hear the differences if any.

Although more boring to be repetitive with your building you do get more practice doing the same operations AND things start to make sense to you too since your variables have been limited and focused.

Practice makes perfect......

Hesh, interesting comments, and very much appreciated. I actually had already planned on building the same guitar shape again - just different woods.

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P A U L B U R N E R
Burner Guitars

You have heard it here many times that most first guitars are overbuilt. When I finally built my first semi-successful guitar, the next thing was to go a little lighter, and then a little lighter again on the following guitars until I went too far. Then I went back one step and began more experimentation from there.

A check list isnt a bad thing to follow. I have omitted steps and had to go back and fix them...it happens. Before you close the box, take a good hard look at what is in there. It will save you some headaches in the long run.

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Reguards,

Ken H