Hi there. I has been quite a while since I have updated the site. I am still working with wood (or at least trying to) but have not done anything that I consider worthy of exposing to the world. I still have lots of projects in the works, but nothing finished to my satisfaction yet.
So, I recently started taking guitar lessons again after nearly 40 years after my last guitar lesson as a teenager, just for something to do. Almost immediately I thought, since I now have a passion for learning guitar, why not combine it with my passion for woodworking and build an electric guitar, with the ultimate end goal of maybe having a new revenue stream when I retire. I did what everyone does when they want to learn a new skill, I went to You Tube and started watching videos of building guitars. Then what really caught my eye was the possibility of using a CNC router to create the guitar bodies and necks, and then paint (or other finish) them and assemble all of the parts and voila, I am in business. Any excuse to justify buying a CNC router. I started by searching for a video on drawing a guitar in Fusion 360 (CAD/CAM software) and realized that I understand the basic concepts of what the person was describing as he drew his guitar, but not nearly enough to really know what he was talking about in any detail. So….. time to start with the basics.
Become a Luthier. For those who don’t know what that is (I had to look it up too) ” A Luthier builds and repairs stringed instruments that have a neck and a soundbox”. In my case, it will be limited to guitars for the time being. Despite there being thousands of videos on You Tube on building a guitar, they are usually done by someone who is very experienced in building guitars and they fly past all of the little details you need when you are staring out. Not a great way of leaning from scratch. As a result, I did what everyone does when You Tube is no longer an option, I went to Amazon and bought a book on building guitars. As there are not thousands of books out there, it was easy to narrow it down to a few and I picked one to start with. Building Electric Guitars by Martin Koch. I have read most of the book (still a few chapers to go) and now realize that this is going to be way harder than You Tube will have you believe.
The only real way to understand the concepts is to build a guitar following along with the process described in the book. However, there are still a lot of unknowns that will only come with time and experience. Instead of building everything from scratch, following the advice of many people including my guitar teacher, I purchased a kit guitar that has everything needed to create my own guitar. More on this in the next blog post.
I know that by watching a hundred videos and reading one book will not make me a luthier, but it is a start. In fact, by starting with the guitar kit, I will learn if this is something that I want to pursue or if it is just another notch on the experience belt. If I like building guitars, I will take a course put on by a master luthier in Chelsea, QC, ( yeah, close by) to build an acoustic guitar from scratch which will be a really good first step in a very long journey. I will keep you posted.