Hello. One of my hobbies is Acoustic Guitar Making (Lutherie)

After I retired from the Navy in 1986 Bonnie and I set out on the high seas aboard our floating home Malulani. Now with some spare time on my hands, I decided to learn to play the guitar. After many hours of self teaching, sore fingers and going through a couple of cheap guitars, I felt like I needed a better instrument. I really could not afford to spend much money. As my dad had a woodworking shop set up in his garage at Driftwood Beach , Virginia , I decided it would be fun to try and build one myself. The Martin Guitar Co. offered kits! So I figured "what could be easier? Just slap it together and you have yourself a Martin at half price". Well it was not that easy! Now I have great admiration for companies such as C.F. Martin. How they can put out such fine instruments at reasonable prices, is beyond me. I did finish that kit guitar and it turned out pretty good. My niece Christine now has it along with the first guitar I built from scratch.

I have built several guitars since the kit guitar and I have started to work professionally now as a lutherie for Pickers Supply in Fredericksburg and am building custom steel string guitars.. I used the wonderful book "Guitar Making: Tradition and Technology" by William R. Cumpiano and Jonathan D. Natelson, as my basic reference but have drawn for many other sources since then. This book is a great way to get started.

     

Here is one of my custom guitars

 
     

 

  • Here are some pictures of my shop
  • Some photos of my previous projects.
  • Here are some thoughts on the guitar building process and some of my recent changes in how I am building will try and update these pages as I build more tools, jigs and modify my building process.
  • Links to some of my favorite guitar building sites

The Process

  1. Planning
  2. Making the neck, cutting the scarf joint, gluing the veneer, routing out the peghead shape and truss rod slot
  3. Inlaying the logo
  4. Making the fretboard
  5. Gluing the fingerboard, and any fretboard inlay
  6. Fretting
  7. Final shaping of the neck
  8. Jointing the plates and gluing the center seam
  9. Dimensioning the plates
  10. Inlay the rosette and cutting out the soundhole
  11. Bracing the top
  12. Bracing the back
  13. Profiling the sides
  14. Bending the sides
  15. Gluing the lining and contouring the sides
  16. Making the Headblock and tail block
  17. Chladni testing and plate tuning.
  18. Assembly of the body
  19. Binding the body,
  20. Setting the neck angle
  21. Making the bridge
  22. Filling the pores of the body and neck
  23. Finishing with lacquer
  24. Polishing
  25. Attaching Neck
  26. Gluin Bridge
  27. Set up and final adjustments

 

Here are some good Links to guitar building related sites.

Pickers Supply My favorite music store and where you can find some Gebeaux Guitars.

 

 

Music Instrument Makers Forum.

http://www.luth.org/index.htm Guild of American Luthiers   Steward McDonald Supplies and more

ASIA The Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans

LMI Wood and Lutihier supplies

  Hoffman_Guitars Great information on the guitar building process

http://www.tabledit.com/links/instrumentbuilders.shtm

A very complete list of Guitar builders

  http://www.acousticfingerstyle.com/ Fingerstyle guitar tablature and links

http://pweb.jps.net/~kmatsu/ An amature builder that has developed and great webpage full of great building information

  http://www.elderly.com/new/new_vintage.htm My favorite on line store
http://www.gruhn.com/ Nashville's number one music store   Frets.com Great site full on hard to find info on repairing
http://www.exoticwoods.com/ A wood supplier    
Some Schools    
http://www.galloupguitars.com/   http://www.roberto-venn.com/
http://www.leedsguitar.com/    
     

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