I've been thinking about making my own box/body--it just occurred to me, that an interior hollow core door might be a good donor for the front and back. Particularly, a nice birch door like this.
New at: $34, it might yield 4 or 5 good size boxes, more if you go with basic squarish boxes. Used $5-10 off Craigslist. One interesting thing is that the veneer is usually book matched, like this:
My wife is going to love having a pile of doors laying around--judging by how happy she is with a pile of cigar boxes...
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So far it has been my experience that there are only the limitations of imagination when it comes to doing these builds. Go for it and share your success 8-)
Realize this is a fairly old post, however. We have a ReStore near us and they sell used interior doors for $5.00. you cant beat that for sure... also in the spring I see hundreds of them out for trash on pic up days. mostly the folding closet type..
FYI ReStore is a place that accepts used items and resells them and the profits go to Habitant for Humanity.. Believe they are in Canada and the USA..
that is a good price.. I think the largest I see around here is like a 24x48 inches and its like 16 bucks..and some places don't have 1/8 only 1/4 which is useless to me.. oh well.
Ask for door skins. Sometimes they're in the lumber section of the home improvement center, other times they're over with the doors and windows. Most good lumber yards carry a decent stock of them as well. Some can order them in a variety of different species, but usually just stock plain luan.
What Chickenbone John said. Since you're on Craig's List already, keep your eye on the FREE, BARTER, and MATERIALS sections. Hollow core doors pop up there for free quite often. They're big, bulky, and folks without a truck just want them gone.
Most door skins are made from 1/8" to 3/16" thick luan (pronounced loo-on) plywood, but you do come across other woods on occasion. There's not a thing wrong with luan either. Lots of guitar builders use it, The overwhelming majority of "all wood" cigar boxes with paper labels are made of luan plywood. The bottoms of most boxes are luan plywood too.
And prepare to be amazed....
Don't buy them, the're pretty easy to come by thrown away in skips (UK) and dumpsters (USA) as long as you get to them before the rain.
I would expect to do some bracing, at this point I'd just about be making a "real" guitar, so why not do it?
Time to start watching for doors...
Used hollow core doors $5-$10? sounds like an excellent way to get thin hardwood veneer plywood for cheap. I put an old door on a pair of saw horses as my assembly table when doing projects in my garage workshop.
Maybe the wife will like them less unkindly if you break them down and store a stack of door skins instead of whole doors?
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