I build guitars. Not professionally , but as a summertime hobby. (I teach high school English and don't really have time to build during the school year.)
I started out easy, in 1987, by building a few small musical instrument kits, such as a dulcimer, a small harp, an autoharp, and a mountain banjo. After discovering that it wasn't as hard as I had envisioned it would be, I finally took the plunge and purchased a Martin D41 dreadnought guitar kit. By my standards today, that first guitar in 1994 was pretty dreadful in its appearance, but its sound was fantastic! And it didn't fall apart or anything. So, I was hooked. Since then, I've built thirteen guitars (and a few other instruments), four for actual paying customers! It is, indeed, an addictive hobby. The main reason I want to keep building them is that I know, with each one, my skills improve.
I built my first four guitars from kits. If you're just beginning,
this isn't a bad way to get into this hobby! To read more about building
from kits, or for links to other helpful sites, click the links below:
You don't need a huge shop or fancy tools to
make guitars for fun. My former house (I moved in December 1998) was a tiny
two-bedroom home with no garage and no basement. I made my guitars in a
spare bedroom and a utility room. (My new house has a little room dedicated
solely to guitarmaking!) If you'd like to see where I make my guitars and
some of the tools and jigs I use, click on the links below:
When I was building my fourth guitar, a D41
rosewood dreadnought, in 1995, I decided to keep a log on the process. I used a database
program to log in and out, each time I began some task on the guitar, and
the program automatically calculated the time spent. The total hours I ended
up actually working directly on that guitar (minus waiting times) was around
168 hours. Since then, I have learned a lot, gained new tools, and changed
many of my building techniques, but the log should still give a general
idea of what I went through as a beginner. If you are interested in reading
about the general process of building a guitar --- through the experience
of an amateur builder --- mistakes and all --- then click on the link below:
Martin "Size 5" Guitar....I also
built three "parlor-size" guitars, modeled after the Martin "Size
5" guitar, which has a 21.3" scale. In the course of building
my second one (my third one is pictured on the Guitar
Photos page), I corresponded with a few Internet friends on the progress
of the guitar. If you would like to view a copy of that record of the building
of the tiny Size 5 guitar, click here:
Internet Luthier Friends: In the process
of building my first guitars ---- and starting to learn how to use the Internet
at the same time --- I got to know a few others, through some of the guitar-building
newsgroups, who were just as "hooked" on building their own guitars
as I was. One of my Internet friends was building his own very first guitar
at about the same time as I was building mine, and we often shared tips
and frustrations. He built a beautiful cutaway fingerstyle guitar, similar
to a Taylor 812, totally from scratch! You can view photos of his guitar
(he calls it the "Wolf Guitar," because of the howling wolf he
inlaid in the peghead) and read his accounts of the building process at
his website. Just click on the link below:
Sunday, November 6th, 2011......Hey....here's another video I just found today, of guitar/ukulele prodigy Sungha Jung playing the harp ukulele (Pete Howlett's design & Anuenue Ukulele's product):
