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This would be the first guitar I've made. I do have some wood working experience, and plenty of friends who could help me with the routing and actual shaping of the body. I also know how to do all the electronics that I actually want on my guitar. However, I don't know anything about how each thing I do effects intonation/tonality of the instrument. I plan to start work on it this summer and am looking for advice and info a beginner should know to make this happen.

This may sound stupid, but I'm probably going to buy two mahogany boards from a local dealer. Do I just have to glue the boards together to get the desired thickness or is there any special way of joining them?

Typical wood joinery is appropriate for guitar making.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

read read read man. there are lots of resources out there to get you started, try Melvyn Hiscock's book "Make Your Own Electric Guitar". this book covers a lot of information in great detail, and is more than enough info to get you started. There are lots of other books, but I've found his to be the most clear and concise.

Another vote for Hiscock's book - he describes building the three classic neck styles (bolt on, set and through neck), and covers all of the important parts of building an electric guitar. Also, find some build threads on the internet - not only will you see how people do things including joining boards, but you'll see the mistakes that they make.

One serious question - do you have a particular guitar that you want to emulate? If so, can you either get one to carefully measure or can you find plans for one somewhere on the intenet? Hiscock covers neck angle and geometry pretty well for standard configurations but for a seven string you are going to have a bunch of new things to contend with - string gauges and spacing, scale length, neck width, bridge and other hardware, pups. Possible tension considerations.

Unless you have detailed plans for a seven string, you might consider building a conventional guitar to get your chops - most of us end up building far more than one LOL. Good luck and welcome to the world of lutherie.

I agree with "read, read, read". Also with all the youtube instructional stuff. Just be aware that a few people post youtube stuff that is totally amateurish and ill-advised. But you can trust the pros. Come here often with questions. Don't be in a hurry. Patiently sort through the answers you receive--even if they aren't exactly what you hoped to hear. Go slowly and cautiously and you will probably be okay.

Now, for my big piece of personal advice: Draw a full scale plan of your proposed guitar, or, if you are copying a known design, buy a full scale plan. This is the only sure way you can visualize all the important angles, clearances, etc. Here's an example that will demonstrate my assertion: Consider the neck and the top plane of the frets. What is your string height above those frets? When your strings follow that line and get to the bridge position, how tall is that bridge saddle? What scale length (from nut to bridge saddle) will you use? I think you will quickly see my point. A full scale plan, whether purchased or drawn by you on brown craft paper, will help you anticipate a bunch of these questions in advance.

My most sincere wishes for a successful outcome. My first guitar was built out of a book with no internet yet developed and no access to an experienced builder. It came out okay, but I have done a lot better since. You can do it if you proceed carefully and check in here frequently. Further, you don't need a lot of fancy tools to do this for a "one off" personal guitar. But you will need a few good hand tools at a minimum, and the helpful folks here can advise you about those, too.

Patrick

Thank you guys for the responses. I will have to get a copy of the book as I've only read good things about it so far. Thank you B.Howard for replying to my question.

I just want to add encouragement. Years ago I got the idea for a guitar and set out to build it. That's what got me started. After some years of making mistakes and learning, taking luithier lessons for a year, and nearly cutting off two fingers with a table saw, I have learned a lot. Some of us learn more quickly with books and forums. Some of us just keep experimenting and trying new things. It is a wonderful hobby for me, I get to have features in a guitar that would otherwise be pretty expensive.

I know making a neck will be really hard, but I'm thinking about going for it anyway. I found some dimensions on Ibanez's site for a neck, and I'm wondering if it will be too thin for something unlaminated (laminating wood sounds like it would be a bit above my skill level). The specks are 48mm wide at the nut, 68mm wide at the last fret, 19mm thick at the first fret, and 21 mm thick at the 12th fret, with a 430 mm radius. The guitar I'm considering emulating is an Ibanez RG 7 string. Thanks.

Or am I just overcomplicating things in my head again, and laminating is as simple as buying more types of wood and gluing them together to use for the neck?

First, you should decide what kind of neck/body joint you want to use (I'm not familiar with that particular Ibanez). Basically they are a bolt on like Fender, "set" glued in neck like a Les Paul, or through neck where it extends all the way thru the body which is glued to each side. Hiscock cover each very well.

Next, the neck can be sawn out of one piece of wood, which is fairly wasteful but traditional, or it can be laminated out of blocks of the same kind of wood (I'll show a picture in a minute). Lastly it can be laminated on either of the axis, but usually that is done vertically down the middle, then it is sawn like the first kind.

The sawn neck is pretty simple - take a big hunk of wood that is deep enough for your head stock and your heel block, put it on its side in a bandsaw and cut off the stuff you don't need. Here is a picture from LMI's site showing how it is done



Next you can buy a thinner board - 1 x 3 is enough, cut off one end at an angle to make the headstock and cut some blocks to make the heel, again from LMI



Last, you can glue several pieces of wood together along the vertical axis to get some very nice contrasting effects - here is a mahogany neck with maple "skunk strip" and some thin ebony laminated together



This is going into an acoustic guitar, but you would something similar to the first drawing above after laminating the pieces together.

I suggested in an earlier reply that you find some build threads for electric guitars. Here is one for my first electric from another forum - it is long and tedious but I wanted to take the forum member through each step of the build. It is a copy of a Les Paul so I had good plans, and while it is my first carved body electric guitar I had built several acoustics so I had a pretty good feel for things like making the neck, fretwork, setup, etc.

This guitar, like most everything I'm building now, has a stacked neck (the second LMI picture above) with a scarfed headstock - there are some pretty detailed pictures of making the neck in the thread (go to page 4). It is also a glued in "set" neck so you can see how the neck pocket and various angles come together to create the string plane over the pickups and bridge (Hiscock discusses this in his book which I hope you've bought by now). Anyway, while this may not be the same configuration that you want to build, it will show you most of the steps involved.

http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/for ... 1/1104633-

Thanks for the link, it will definitely be useful for me to have a reference of someone else building a guitar. I have also watched some youtube videos of a professional luthier build some custom strats and tele's. I found a friend with a drill press so drilling things will be easier than I first thought. I have my own router but I don't know if I have bits with bearings, I haven't checked yet. My largest problem is finding wood for a decent price. I might go ask around in the Michigan section of this forum.