The Whole Set

Last post before the new year, I think. I figured I throw up an image (eew, gross!) of the whole set of them. The incomplete one on the right is a new over-sized design I'm trying. The person it's being made for is well over six feet tall, so I thought a taller cajon might be in order. And I wanted to see what it would sound like, too. Happy Holidays, everyone!

And He Reaches The Finish Line! (almost)

And here's the (almost) finished product. Red oak tappa on both front and back, rounded corners for more comfort when sitting on it and it sounds friggin' awesome. I've made a few others and this new one leaves them all behind sound wise. This is one of three I'm making as Christmas gifts for nieces and nephews, so I'm thrilled it plays so well. I'm going to wait until I get to Colorado to urethane them and put the little feet on the bottom because the humidity is just to high here right now and it would take forever to dry. (I know from experience)

I'll take some more photos of them in Colorado when they're finished and be sure to get them posted.

And It Starts To Look Like A Box . . .

It is a box drum after all, so the top is glued the top, the bottom is glued to the bottom and it starts to look like a box. Not rocket science. I also glued pieces of the quarter round into the slots on the upper corners. No more unsightly creases in your butt from the corners of the drum when you're playing. (For those of you unfamilar with cajones, you sit on top of the drum to play it.) Now it looks something like this.

I Digress Yet Again

For the whole both of you who follow my ramblings, sorry for the long pause between posts. Stupid holidays.

This digression is at least still in the realm of music. I've been unemployed more than employed over the last year, so I didn't really have big bucks for Christmas gifts. People always say how much they like hand made gifts, so I thought I'd see if it was true. I've been making cajones, which are Peruvian box drums, to give as gifts. I went down to my exotic wood dealer to see what they had that would fit the sort of drum I wanted to make.

I picked up some maple for the sides and top and some red oak and cherry for the tappa (the drumming surfaces). I also went to Home Depot and got some 3/4 in square stock for the frame and some red oak "quarter round" to execute an idea I had for the corners. I put quarter round in quotes because it's not actually quarter round, which is an even quarter circle in profile. This stuff I got is longer along half the curve making one side 3/4 and the other 1/2. I had chosen aspects of designs I had seen that I liked and thrown in some things I thought were original (until I saw that other people had been building cajons that way all along)

First, I cut the sound hole in one of the sides. Traditionally they're in the back, but I want two drumming surfaces, front and back, so I'll have to go with the side. My design has a recessed bottom and the top needs to be raised above the top of the sides to accommodate the corner trim, so I cut some of my frame stock and glued it flush with the top and brought it up a half inch from the bottom so I could recess the bottom.

Back To It

Started back up on the second cigar box guitar a couple of days ago. Glued on and shaped the fingerboard and made an ebony bridge for it. The holes for the bridge pins need to be tapered, and I don't have a bit for a drill that'll do that, so I drilled straight holes at the minimum diameter and then I'm using tapered files to ream the hole to appropriate size. It's a little time consuming and a little tough on my wrists, but it's turning out well. The bridge pins are white to match the keys on the tuning machines and the bridge is from the same ebony block the inlay on the fingerboard is made from, so hopefully it'll all fit together, design-wise, when it's finished. Once the bridge pin holes are finished it's time to urethane the guitar.

I Digress 3

I apologize for the lousy photo. Low light here today, so it's difficult to hold the camera still enough that it doesn't blur. I was surprised at how dark the 'khaki' came out, but not really upset. I wasn't trying to match the bags to anything else, so the color didn't really matter. Now I know what I get when I use khaki straight out of the jar. (I've mixed it with other dyes in the past). In the future if I'm looking for what I think of as khaki I guess I'll have to go with some species of tan. Anyway, there they are in all their finally finished glory. Now back to musical instruments.

I Digress 2

Here they are, all five of them put together and pre-washed in preparation for dying. The lengths of webbing have been cut for the straps and everything is pretty much ready to go. I'm going to go with khaki and see how they turn out, though they do sorta look cool white. I'll have to make some white ones some day, maybe.

I Digress

 

I know this probably seems strangely random, but I thought it had been too long since my last post and decided to go ahead and put this up here. The short version of the long story is I stalled on the banjo because I needed some good material for the fingerboard and I was waiting for the fret wire to arrive in the mail. Not wanting to sit idle I thought I would make a case for the first cigar box guitar. I've been playing it a LOT and thought it would be nice to have an easy way to transport it. Well, I got the case nearly done (I'll show you next post) but it needed some straps and handles. All the webbing I had for straps and handles was raw and needed to dyed. I've been working on these shoulder bags, which I was also going to dye, so I decided to finish the shoulder bags first and dye the webbing for both the shoulder bags and the guitar case at the same time. So, here's what's what with the shoulder bags.



I'm making five of them at the same time so I can dye them all in the same lot. The straps will be dyed to match. They're from a pattern I made myself based (fairly closely) on a WWII Britsh Mk VII gasmask bag. I have one that I completed a while back in the image to give a better idea of where it's going. I'll throw up another image of the completed bags, snaps, dyed and all, when I get there.

 

One More Little Step Closer

I cut a groove in each piece of the frame for the head to insert into, then assembled it all to make sure everything fits together like it should. The body of the banjo will looks something like this. Sorta like a big Chinese Pa Qua Mirror. I hope it doesn't end up looking too strange.

Building A Rim

   The bodies of banjos are made of either wood or metal. Metal would be no fun 'cause I'd just have to buy a pre-made one. That sort of defeats the purpose of making your own.  As near as I can tell there are two ways to make a wooden one. Either by laminating thin pieces of wood around a wooden form which requires steaming the wood like bending the sides of a traditional acoustic guitar or by gluing straight pieces together into a hexagon and then rounding them on a lathe. If I had a lathe I'd be making flutes and clarinets. The whole reason I'm making strings is because I can't have a lathe in my living room. So I decided to skip the lathe part, but go with the second approach anyway. I made myself a mitre box with he appropriate angles cut in it and went to work.

   I was willing to put up with some facets around the outside, but a hexagon just didn't seem round enough for me, so I decided to go with twelve sides (this time. Next time I might go with 24, but I wanted to see if this was going to work first.)  When I was done carefully cutting all twelve I put them all together to see how they fit. This is what I got.

Another In A Long List . . .

 

. . . of hair-brained ideas. The second cigar box guitar, even though it was turning out fairly well, was causing me a great deal of frustration. I was trying to make a trim piece to go around where the neck inserts into the body and on the third failed attempt (and subsequent waste of expensive/exotic hardwood) I decided to step away from it for a bit. I'm going to go on to something else and will come back to it when the mutual hostility has subsided.
     This next project is going to be a banjo. I know even less about banjos than I do about guitars, so I don't know what I'm thinking 'cept I think it's going to be fun. I spent a fair amount of time going through ideas on what to do about the 'pot'. I thought about using a commercially produced hand drum as a base, I considered stretching my own drum head, as I've done that making taiko drums so it's something I'm familiar with . . . various things were possibilities. But then in my research I ran across some reference and images of banjos with metal heads. They're not common, but they are out there, and for whatever reason the idea appealed to my twisted brain. So a metal head it is.  Now, how to go about it?



    I went on a quest to find something that could be repurposed to be my metal banjo head. I was looking everywhere. Nothing I was finding seemed right. When The Wife Unit asked what I was looking for I said, "Something I can use as a metal banjo head. They look something like this." and showed her an image I had found. She said, "Looks like a pie tin." The thud from me smacking my forehead could be heard a block away. My search continued in the kitchen section of our local dry goods store. I decided to go with a tart pan. The bottom is removable. I'm not sure if I'm going to find a way to use the side segment or not, but the bottom will be perfect .

Fitting The Neck

I needed to be able to put the neck into the body to fit various other parts of the guitar, so it was time to cut the notches. The joint doesn't fit as tightly as I wanted it to, but it's going to have to do. The taper at the bottom of the neck looks and fits against the box exactly as I had hoped it would. I won't glue the neck into the box for a while yet. Still more finish work to do and I have to drill it for the tuning machines first, but at least now I can stick it together and have a decent idea of where it's all headed.

Inlay Sucks

At some point along the way I decided that I was going to make this one fretless, but that I would inlay fret markers so when you're playing it you have some idea of where to put your fingers or stop your slide. I have a nifty router and a tiny router bit to cut the grooves and I have left over ebony that I can cut down and fill the grooves with, right? Seemed like a good idea at the time. The fingerboard is red oak. I've been wanting to try a red oak fingerboard for quite a while. Well, it's got hard and soft spots that the router doesn't like at all. That's a pretty minor difficulty, though. I just went slow and kept it tight to the fence and I got through it well enough. Then came the time to cut the ebony into one eighth inch wide strips that I can glue into the grooves. That's a lot easier to say than it is to do, let me tell you. I won't be in a hurry to inlay on another instrument in the future unless I can come up with a much easier way to cut the inlay material. Once the remaining eight fret markers are placed I'll cut the fingerboard to the appropriate taper and sand the fret markers down until they're flush with the fingerboard surface.

Neck Improved

So I said, "Wife. What do you think about my adding the taper to the bottom of the neck where it attaches to the block, like in a classical guitar. It'll just be aesthetic, 'cause the neck goes all the way through, but it might look kinda cool" Wife said, "I think you should".  Many days and raw, aching hands later this wonderful feature has been added to the neck. Moral of the story: Keep your fool mouth shut. Anyway, this is the neck as it looks now. I've got some more sanding to do, then I have to drill the tuning machine holes, then I can attach it to the body. Now I've gone and ruined the surprise of what the next few posts will be. See how I am?

Roughed In Neck

Cut the neck piece and glued on the headstock, then roughed in the taper of the neck. I've been thinking more about the part of the neck that attaches to the soundboard (top of the cigar box). How loud the guitar plays is affected by the size of the volume of air it causes to vibrate. Larger resonating chamber, louder volume, in simplistic terms. In addition the more of the surface of the sound board allowed to vibrate freely the better, so the neck should be glued to it along the smallest area that will still be structurally acceptable. So, like the previous guitar, I cut 'shelves' in the neck where it inserts into the cigar box. One level for where it will be glued, cut down so that the top of the sound board will be flush with the top the neck so the fingerboard will glue down properly. The next level down to prevent the neck from making contact with the soundboard, allowing it to vibrate freely. Then I took a piece out of the center in an attempt to reduce the amount of space the neck takes up inside the resonating chamber. If nothing else, it made the guitar lighter, which isn't bad either. I have no idea if these things really make a difference or not, but I'm going to go ahead and try them and see what happens.

Here We Go Again

Guitar no. 2. These are the materials I'm working with. This one is going to progress more slowly than the last, however, because I can't dedicate my full attention to it. Lots of other things going on. The new cigar box is a Chavon Dominicano. I thought the foil label was particularly cool. I've got a piece of oak that I dug out of the rubbish pile at an industrial site (I actually got three pieces. Straight, nice lookin, quite a find) for the neck, a piece of red oak for the fingerboard which is already planed down and properly tapered and left over scraps of the ebony I used on the previous guitar. I'm looking forward to this one. I have some new ideas that I want to try out.

Just In Case You Were Curious

This is what it sounds like.

some random cords
simple finger style example

Please don't be too critical, I don't actually play guitar. Hopefully it'll give you an idea, anyway. This is unamplified, straight acoustic. The recordings sound less like a banjo to me than the instrument does in person. Kinda interesting. Anyway, on to the next project.

Wouldja Lookit That!

It's done! I carefully constructed a new bridge with a separate saddle so that I could move the saddle to compensate for how the fingerboard, and consequently the nut, shifted when I glued it on. I based the bridge design on my classical guitar's and I was very happy with how it turned out. I glued it on, waited overnight, then put the strings on so I could slip the bridge underneath and move it around until the guitar played in tune. Plucking the strings to see how it sounded, I tightened them in rotation. Somewhere about half way to proper tuning I was struck soundly in the left forearm by the bridge at high velocity as it snapped off under the string tension. After the initial shock a closer examination showed that it wasn't the glue joint that broke, but that the top layer of wood on the tail end of the neck had peeled off and gone with the bridge on it's high velocity journey. After some contemplation I decided to put in some metal pins to assure the bridge would stay in place. I had some 3 sixteenths hardened steel rod from one of my previous projects and I cut two three quarter inch pieces, drilled the bridge and neck to fit them, filled the holes with glue and hammered them in. I put the strings back on the guitar and promptly broke the high E string, proving to myself that now, at least, the strings would break before the bridge would. Anyway, now it's done. It's quiet, though not as quiet as it seemed at first, and it sounds more like a banjo than a guitar, but the frets were placed well and it plays in tune. I just went with the first four strings of the guitar so it's E, B, G, D and I used nylon strings 'cause that's what I'm used to. I have a whole pile of ideas for the next one. : )

Look Ma!

Frets! Truth be told, though, I'm not really very excited. I didn't do a very good job with them, though now I think the process is clearer and I will do much better next time. The fingerboard is now glued to the neck (which I learned should have been done prior to fret installation) it's only off of where it should be by an eighth of an inch :(. I'm hoping I can compensate in the bridge placement so the whole thing isn't off key. I also learned that smacking your left index finger with the fretting hammer doesn't help your guitar playing at all. I promise on the next one I'll put more effort into setting up a decent photo situation so the pictures are clearer and things are easier to see. And there definitely will be a next one, (and probably several more after that) I've already tapered the fingerboard for it and selected the cigar box I'm going to use.

Tuning Machines!

Put the tuning machines on. Way cool. Almost looks like a guitar now. Put the fingerboard and bridge on it to have a look and I'm realizing it's a pretty plane jane lookin' instrument. Gonna have to get a little more creative on the next one to make it look more interesting.

All Sorts Of Stuff

Well, I got a little ahead of myself and did some things and forgot to take photos. I'm going to try and go back a little bit and explain what I did to catch everyone up to date. (all four of you ;)

I made a bridge out of ebony. I was considering making one out of a number of other types of wood and I even purchased a pre-made one of rosewood, but ultimately I wasn't happy with any of them. Ebony just seemed to complement the finger board and balance out the aesthetic.

The tuning machines finally arrived so I could measure them and drill the holes in the headstock. Despite carefully measuring, drilling guide holes first and using the utmost care drilling, the tuning machine holes still look uneven. Bummer. I keep trying to remind myself that this is my first one and that I'll get better with practice.

I felt like the guitar was a little on the boring side in general, visually speaking. I got some water based stain, took the hinges and latch off and gave the whole thing two coats. Though the stain was fairly subtle it was pretty much exactly what I was looking for. It makes the wood seem a little richer without being too dark

As you may recall from a previous post I cut the notches in the body for the neck too large. I decided to make some trim pieces that would fit tight around the neck and cover up the gaps left in the body. After going through a bunch of different design possibilities I decided to go with simple squares with rounded corners. I felt they went best with the simple square round cornered box of the guitar body. I cut them out of quarter inch red oak. I had some scrap laying around. For whatever reason I found getting them right exceedingly difficult and I made five of them to get the two successful ones I finally glued to the top of the body.

Finally, now that it's been stained and everything that will receive urethane has been glued in place, I masked off where the bridge and fingerboard will cross onto the body and give the whole thing six coats of urethane, sanding in between. The surface isn't as mirror smooth as I might have liked but I'm still pretty happy with how the surface feels and I'm quite sure it's sealed.

Disaster Averted

A little glue a butt-load of clamps and some patience and I was able to fix the fingerboard. It's now been shaped, tapered in both width and thickness and sanded smooth on the side the frets will be put on. I purposefully left it a little long on both the nut and body ends to make sure it wasn't too short when it came time for fitting.

Uh Oh

So, I started to work on the finger board. I have this awesome piece of ebony. I think the difference in color between the nearly black fingerboard and the pale colored white oak of the neck will create a very attractive contrast. I carefully measured out the taper from headstock to body and drew it on the piece of ebony with a white pencil, measured the length, etc, and got out the ole Japanese saw and started to cut it down to size. I was about five inches from done when . . .well, you can see in the photo. There were some natural imperfections in the piece of wood and I guess I sawed off the area that made it structurally sound. I'm going to try to glue the shard back in and seal the split that goes up the body of the fingerboard.

Notches Everywhere!

 

Firstly, sorry for the poor photographs. My camera seems to be having problems. I'll borrow my daughter's camera next time.
Work on the neck continues: I shaped the back of the neck where it connects to the head stock, rounded the body of the neck and tapered it up to where it fits into the body. It looks much more like an actual guitar neck, now, and feels great when you hold it. The top side is still fairly rough in comparison, but the finger board will be glued over the top of it, so I don't want to spend a great deal of effort finishing it. Just making it smooth enough that the finger board will flush up against it is enough. I also didn't want to do anything with the head stock just yet, because the tuning machines haven't arrived yet. I want to measure them, etc, so I can place them properly before I get all fancy with the headstock. (if I'm gonna get all fancy at all).



Next thing I tackled was notching the neck so it will fit into the body properly. No, wait. That's not what I did next, but it should have been. What I did do next was cut the notches in the body (the Cigar Box that gives the guitar it's name) so the neck would fit into it. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.




Now is when I notched the neck so it would fit into the body. But see, I already notched the body to fit the neck in it's pre-notched state, so when I was done notching the neck the notches in the body were too big because now the neck had notches in it. Crud. Anyway, I'm convinced I can work around it and still make it look decent in the end. Lesson learned. This is what the neck looks like with it's spiffy new notches.


Cigar box guitars most often have the neck extend all the way through the body of the instrument. Usually if it's constructed like a regular guitar where the neck just attaches to the end of the body and the strings are anchored to the sound board, the guitar will break or bow terribly under the stress of the stretched strings. The common way to make them is to just affix the board used for the neck to the inside of the top of the cigar box. As I was working on this guitar it occurred to me that if the neck board made contact with the top of the cigar box over it's entire length that it would dampen the vibration of the top generated by the strings. That seems counter productive to me. So I decided to not only notch the neck so that the top edge is flush with the front of the body/box to accommodate the fingerboard crossing over onto the body, but also to notch the middle so that it only made contact with the guitar top on the edges, allowing the top to vibrate more freely and hopefully getting better sound, sustain and volume. We'll see when I'm done if it actually turns out that way.



Now that everything has notches cut in it, the neck and body can be fit together. I'm not going to glue them yet because I want the neck free for installing the tuning machines, and the tail of the neck that sticks out the other side of the body will be trimmed down to a shorter length, but it's still sort of cool seeing it look a little more like a guitar

 

Getting Started

So, first thing I did was decide what scale length I was going to make the guitar. Scale length is the effective vibrating length of the string, basically the distance from the nut, what supports the strings up on the neck, and the saddle, what supports the strings on the soundboard down on the body of the guitar. If I'm honest, and I guess there's no point in not being so, I don't know that much about guitars. When it doubt, go with what you know. In my case, that's classical guitars. They all have a scale length of 26 inches, so that's what I decided to go with. Now that that's been decided I can start to work on the neck. I angle cut the white oak at a length giving me plenty of extra should I make a mistake, flipped one side of the wood over and glued them back together to create an angled head stock. Then I ripped the neck down so it's tapered and rounded out the corners where the headstock meets the neck. Here's the neck roughed in.

(sorry for the lousy photo)

Post No. First

Started on a cigar box guitar. I went by the local craft shop and picked up a small, square, wooden box. It's all the rage right now to make all sorts of things out of cigar boxes, so they sell 'blank' ones at craft stores so Sally Housecoat doesn't have to go to a smelly smoke shop to get one. Anyway, picked one up and then started to contemplate what else I would I need. There's a really good exotic hard wood seller in my area, so I went down there to poke around and see what I could find. They had a piece of white oak in the two dollar bin, two and a half inches wide and an inch thick by five feet or so long. Perfect for a neck or two. I also picked up a piece of ebony for the finger board. That set me back seven bucks. I was thrilled goin' home with my fancy guitar wood for less than ten dollars. Anyway, This is what I got.