Day 1

The picture on the left shows the pre cut necks with slot cut for the truss rod but nothing cut out for the head of the neck design.

The picture on the right shows the pre cut body that I picked out of poplar and my fretboard which is made from zebra wood.

On day one we started with the paper work of the class but after that we went over all of our homework where we priced out the cost of buying all of the guitar parts separately. This quickly turned into a conversation of why it is best to buy from guitarbuilding.org and how there cost is less than half of what any of us came up with as pricing ourselves.

We also learned about the history of the program/grant and how it all started. The history behind the class is interesting to know that they never anticipated this large of a program. I found it interesting to think that they applied for the grant and were approved first try and the fact that they can stretch a 3 year grant into 4 years worth of institutes is fantastic.

Next came the fun part, picking out our body, neck and fretboard. We all picked a number out of the hat 1-13 and went in order first for the bodies then reverse order for the neck and fretboard. I got lucky number 11 which was okay because I really wanted the zebrawood fretboard. I came into the program thinking I would pick a solid wood body and just do finish but the swirl technique was in the back of my mind so I picked a solid poplar body to do that. I was lucky enough to get the zebrawood fretboard.

After some sketching and watching demonstrations on techniques and steps that need to be done a certain way we started to get to the fun stuff. Time to make some saw dust!!! First thing I did was start shaping the body because everyone ran to the bandsaw to cut their neck design out. I was first using the rasp but then I used the spinning wheel of death (a grinder with an aggressive bit) and that worked well. After this I went to the bladder sander to sand the lines down. Next I went and sanded the body with 150 grit and got out the machine and sanding marks. After sanding down more with 220, raised the grain and then 320 to finish the sanding. During the sanding process I made sure I went over to the bandsaw to cut my headstock design. After cutting it out I went to the sander and sanded the bandsaw marks out and made it looks really good. The final thing I did was put the truss rod in the neck of the guitar and glue on the fretboard. Now I have to wait for it to dry and shape tomorrow when I come in.

First thing to do tomorrow is swirl dip my guitar which I am extremely excited about because I have never done this before.

Above are designs I drew for the head stock which I wanted to look like a shark. After some consideration and talk with some of the others in the class I decided to stick with this design but alter it so I can paint the neck part into a shark when I get home which I think is going to be extremely cool.

Below shows how to measure the pickup to make sure our fretboard will fit onto the neck and make marks on the side so when we go to glue them together we don't have to worry about measuring anything. This was done with a partner to make it so much easier.

Skills needed: Basic sketching skills, Measurement/Layout and hand tool skills.

Below in the picture to the left it shows where I decided to put my arm cut into the guitar custom to my body so when I play it I will feel most comfortable.

In the picture to the left shows me using the bladder sander after I took the grinder and hand rasps to make most of the shape. This sander worked so well I decided to go back and cut more down and blend it in more than I first anticipated.

Skills needed: Attention to detail, some tool skills, basic sanding skills.

Below are pictures of how the truss rod bends in the guitar to help with the tension of the strings and then the other picture (right) shows exactly how to put the rob in correctly so you don't have it stick up above the plane of the neck.

Skills needed: Simple engineering understanding of tension.

Above are two pictures of my neck and how we glued them together. We first aligned them with two little brad nails in the slot that the fret is going to go because it will get covered up. Next we used wood glue and glued them together with the use of the long rubber band that we simple wrap around and around but making sure its tight.

Skills needed: Simple power tools skills, attention to detail and attention to detail.

This was the last step of day 1 and I am very happy with all of the progress the class and I made on all of our guitars, we all have our fretboards glued onto our necks and bodies sanded.