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Building a simple cigar box guitar

20K views 2 replies 1 participant last post by  JJohnston 
#1 ·
Fitting and shaping the neck

In this series, I'll be building a simple cigar box guitar. You can see just how simple by comparing it to a proper instrument - Randall Price's tenor guitar, for example.

It's a "through neck" design, meaning the neck goes all the way through the body, and only it counteracts the tension in the strings. The box is non-structural; it just looks good, and serves as a resonating chamber.

The first step is to mill up a neck blank, then use it to lay out for a hole in each end of the box for the neck to pass through. It's laid out with the top surface of the neck flush with the top surface of the box. The top of the neck needs a wide, shallow dado the same depth as the thickness of the box top to fit flush.

One hole and part of the dado:
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The poplar neck blank fitted to the box. The strings will be anchored through the 3 holes in the end. To strengthen the wood at the ancorage, I'm using pop rivets with the stems removed, as bushings. At this point, the neck blank is 7/8Ă—1 1/2Ă—36". Poplar isn't normally used in guitar necks, but it will only have 3 light gauge strings.
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Next is laying out the head end of the neck, for the tuning hardware and the nut (the upper bridge). I've got the holes for the tuning gears laid out, and you can see the layout line on the edge for reducing the thickness to accommodate the stems on the tuners. I will also have to narrow the neck slightly out near the end so it won't interfere with the knob on the center string tuner.

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Head shaped. This was done with drill press, bandsaw, disc sander and spindle sander. This took a couple of hours. The nut layout line is visible. This will get a dado about 1/4" wide and deep. Next step is putting a nice big roundover on the back edges of the neck, but for that, I have to build a router table first.
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#2 ·
Recovery and more neck shaping

This part is mostly catch-up. I ruined my first neck, rounding over one of the front edges instead of the back. I made up another, this time out of maple. It looks very similar, with the same design for the head. To stop the roundovers at the right spot, I jigged up stops on the router table. I had to set these up twice, with a separate setup for each side. Here it is, along with my router table, which I made by lopping an old desk in two.
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Feeding from right….
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To left.
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The completed head, with a slot cut out for the nut.
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And the roundovers on the neck. I got a little burning, but nothing that won't sand out. As always, ignore the plastic sawhorses where a proper bench should be.
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Next: More neck shaping
 

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#3 ·
Major assembly

I hit my stride today, and knocked out quite a bit of work on this. I had an inspiration on the roundovers on the back of the neck. At the end of the previous installment, I had only run them with the back of the neck down on the router table. I realized if I turned it up on edge and ran the already-rounded edges through again, the ends would look a lot nicer, and would be more hand-friendly. The best view of this is in this shot of tuner installation. Note how the radius on each face fades smoothly into the square section (compare that to the picture in the last installment). This required only final sanding to get it to this state. I'm the last one to figure this out, right?
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I sprayed the neck with rattlecan lacquer. It's not apparent here, but the maple just looks fantastic when the lacquer hits it.
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Starting the box work now. I drilled 2 sound holes, and holes for the jack and pickup. If you want to drill a smaller hole centered on a bigger one, and you really want it centered, don't eyeball it - measure it.
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I'm using a "rod piezo" pickup (from cbgitty.com). A slot on the underside of the bridge will cover it.
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Starting on the hickory bridge. This is the slot for the pickup. This was done with a 1/8" straight cutting bit on the router table.
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A couple of passes with a 3/8" roundnose bit and I had an "H" shaped section. Rip that in half on the tablesaw, bevel the ends, and I have a bridge.
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The nut is just a little slab of hickory, 1/4" thick, cut to match the width of the neck, with the upper edge beveled. It just rests in the groove. I was surprised to learn that these are often made of bone on proper guitars. Turns out bone is pretty hard. The tuners are Grover brand, "vintage" style.
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Gluing the neck to the underside of the lid. When the glue is dry, it'll be ready to string up! At that point, I'll test the electronics, and make a final decision on closing up the box (glue or not-so-permanent screws).
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