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When I built my first I had the Cumpiano & Natelson book, and I had Build Yourself an Acoustic Guitar by Jonathan Kinkead. By the time I finished the build the Kinkead book was dogeared and dusty, Cumpiano still in mint condition (do you want to buy my copy?). A vast difference in readability, illustrations and clarity. The Cumpiano book is pretty dated now, and even William himself has changed a lot of his methods from those in the book.
BTW - (1) you should do a bolt-on neck, easier and better, (2) Do not ignore the humidity issue. It is really disheartening when your beautifully braced soundboard turns into an inverted potato chip shape within a couple of days - because you glued the bracing on a rainy day and later it dried out.

This has been such an amazing thread - thank you all so much. I'm convinced that my first step needs to be a fair amount of reading, following by a kit. I love how much customization some of the kits allow, but they can be quite pricey. Is it worth it starting with a cheap-o kit under the assumption that I'll screw up quite a bit, and don't want to be heartbroken when I ruin that beautiful piece of bearclaw spruce.

It takes too much work to build a guitar to waste your time on a cheap kit. Go for a quality kit without the bling from a supplier like Blue's Creek Guitars. You can get a basic kit that will contain a selection of parts that you know will go together properly to make a good guitar. Plus you will learn more, get good support and avoid what could be a mountain load of frustration.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

There is some truth in this... but it's mostly based on my desire to have my stock perfectly flat and square before I start shaping! This can absolutely be done with hand tools, but the learning curve to flatten a twisted board with a hand plane is much greater than doing it with a power planer.

As you were...

+1. I still stand by my comment earlier. Build the guitar you want the first time, even if it's expensive and it doesn't meet your expectations. This gives you an accurate frame of reference (stake in the ground) to move forward. If your first guitar is different materials than your second you will have too many variables to know what happened.... unless you end up smashing and burning the first one

The thing about a kit is that you still have to do all the really important stuff yourself. The stuff that makes a guitar do what a guitar is supposed to do. Play easily and sound good. Top voicing, neck set, fretboard leveling and fretwork, neck profile, nut and saddle fabrication, setup, are all on you. Those are challenging and have a learning curve.

I agree, fork over the cash for a good product.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

It depends on the type of "learner" you are. If you are someone who learns from multiple iterations, then cheap materials might be a less expensive and better option. If you are someone who studies the construction methods and has good woodworking skills going into the project, then it might make sense to use more expensive materials (if that is what you prefer). There have been fine guitars built with inexpensive materials and mediocre guitars built with premium materials. The renowned guitar maker Antonio Torres built guitars with materials that many of today's builders would turn their noses up at.

I think it's important to note that what "nice materials" means something different to everyone, and represents a broad spectrum. IMO, perfectly reasonable to build with a nice bearclaw soundboard, but I probably wouldn't use The Tree and an LS redwood top on your first.

My advise, just call John at Bluescreek. He'll talk you through everyone and let you know when you might want to take a step back.

I’m new too:) 22 builds in.
My advice is to, as someone already said, have fun and enjoy yourself. When you get frustrated walk away and come back,

I personally recommend starting with a kit:) it will cut way down on the special tools and jigs you’ll need.

I built my first one from bluescreek guitars. John is a huge help.

Smile and enjoy it.


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If you take a course, you don't need any tools or jigs at all and you walk away with a guitar built from scratch under close instruction and supervision from start to finish, and with a hands-on experience and understanding of how a guitar gets built. And you are ready to hit the ground running for the next one if you like what you learned. Then you can worry about buying tools and making jigs.

This assumes finding a good course to take and there can be a significant cost, but the return on that investment can be huge.

It also assumes that taking the time out to take a course is practical and for many it's not.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I don’t disagree:)


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I’m a beginner. I am answering the OP, and anyone else that wants to read it, with my journey, past and current. This is just how I did it, and I wouldn’t change much, because it is working for me. Your mileage may vary, and there are many different paths to take. This was mine.

I read books and forums about guitar building for 30 years. The cost of specialty tools held me back. One day six years ago, a girl bought me an unplayable guitar from Goodwill. She actually cried when I told her it was a piece of junk and was unplayable, “the man said it was a good one”. Something snapped and I bought my first $600 order of tools, enough to make a nut, saddle, install and level frets and a beam to sand the fretboard.

I augmented those tools with less expensive tools from ebay; steel radius gauges and the correct radius block (I started with a paper radius gauge from one of the books). I fixed that Sears Silverstone Steel String guitar. It took about a month to get it playing and actually still love to play it.

That repair/ fabrication was so satisfying, I did nut+saddle+fret crown+ setup on my Yamaha and Mex Martin guitars and bought a few used student guitars and did the same. They all sounded and played better afterwards. I was pretty good at it, mostly because I’m older and wiser in terms of going slow and methodical.

I was a goner at that point and HAD TO BUILD ONE.
Choosing wood was so daunting. I found that East Indian Rosewood was becoming hard to find and my local tone wood supplier (Hibdon Hardwood in St. Louis) was no longer cutting it or selling it. I settled on a rosewood/ dovetail kit from Stewmac. In fact, I bought three of them because of Bill Hibdon’s comments. After 6 years, I’m almost finished with #3 .

What I found with the StewMac kit was:
• It came with a full scale drawing.
• It came with ALL the material needed (sans tuners and finishing supplies) to build a very nice dreadnaught.
• It came with a darned decent construction manual (and a supplemental DVD).
• The manual included instruction for jigs needed (inside mold which was included in the kit, radius wedges made from index cards, radius sanding beam from wood, clamps and cauls needed for a proper glue up.
• Complex geometric parts (neck block, bridge saddle and dovetail) were pre-machined and sides were pre-bent, allowing me a accumulate additional tools and experience over time.

I swapped out the binding, pickguard, bridge pins, end wedge and other cheap looking parts with more aesthetic materials from luthier suppliers. I learned how to correct mistakes. I learned which tools were good for building guitars, and which were not. I acquired additional tools (block planes, smaller width chisles, dozuki saw) as I discovered my personal best methods. The kit allowed me to learn basic skills, not required for wood working, but highly recommended for guitar building. The kit allowed me recognize what additional tools I needed to build a guitar from scratch.

The first kit took me 18 months to build (including jigs) and finish with nitrocellulose lacquer. IT exceeded my wildest expectations for a quality guitar with a jaw dropping finish.
The second build I added pearl inlay on headstock, a pearl rosette and zipflex pearl purfling. It took me 18 months to complete. It also exceeded my wildest expectations.
Im near completion of my third kit, pearl inlay, pearl rosette, pearl purfling and wood binding. Its been on the bench for 14 months and still needs some lacquer repair before I fit the neck etc. I built a Uke kit in this time as well.

The books:
Cumpiano: Good reference, buy one used. Difficult to follow as it focuses on classical with steel string as an option.

Kinkead: Good reference, buy one used.

Mottola; BUILDING the STEEL STRING ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2021: 493 pages. This is by far, hand down, absolutely the best building book I own. There are other jewels in the Kinkead and Cumpiano books that will give you other options/ things to think about.

Trevor Gore: Advanced, wish I had my money back.

Somogyi: Advanced, maybe got $5 worth from a $300 set. Not much for me in this book, I hate it, and Somogyi is very arrogant.

Jewett (General finishing), Flexner (General Finishing), Levan (Guitar set up), Erlewine (Finishing), Erlewine (Setup), are all good supplemental texts and I recommend you have them- by used save some coin.

The takeaway;
If you start with learning to make nut/ saddle/ re-fret/ crown frets/ proper setup, on guitars you have (or student models you find) you will have gained essential knowledge (and tools) you need to build a guitar.

If you advance with a kit or two, you will gain essential knowledge about the most challenging and tool intensive parts already completed (you dont have to learn to fix it when you screw it up) helping guarantee a great guitar in the end.

Building kits has given me six years to slowly accumulate tools and fixtures (side bender, pipe bender, building forms, layout templates, spray equipment, radius dishes, thickness sander, rasps, etc.). Starting with kits allowed me to gain experience and knowledge that will prove indispensable in a top notch scratch build. Slowly building kits has allowed me to spread out the cost of tools and materials (I have acquired materials for three scratch builds now). I also have two (almost 3) KILLER acoustic dreadnaughts, and I get to keep the tools, unlike a $5000 on-site guitar class.

When I run into something I’m not sure about, I always test on scrap, and/ or prove out my process. This has included adhesives, how much wood is removed with what grits of paper, the finishing schedule etc.

So that’s how I started and how I am proceeding. This has been pretty expensive too, but probably cheaper than golf, or a Bass Boat. You really just have to start, somewhere. Hope you find a lane to get in to get started!

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum