I've seen a number of cbg's with dual broom handle or dowel necks. What is the best material to use for a 3 or 4 stringer with this style neck? Any other considerations I should know about before building my first in this style?
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It helps to find a nice long tuning peg. Or, cut notches in the broom handles for a tuning peg. On my wd40 oil can guitar, I used what I had here at home....two broken broom handles. They do not go all the way through, they bolt on to a seperate peice of wood in my weird creation. The nice smooth surface of a broom handle sounds pretty good, that is, for a broom handle. I am thinking of making my next cbg into a broom handle guitar, we shall see. I think I will make it lowbow style with the handles going all the way through, 4 string......yeah....that sounds good. To keep things together,you can do what did and screw the dowles/handles together at the bottom, then I added a hose clamp at the top and super glued a nut below the hose clamp. Makes for a interesting look. The awesome thing about thse cbg's are they are so dang easey to make. You don't have to be a super wood craftsman to slap some broom handles into a box and make a rockin' guitar. And they sound really well cuz' most of the broom handles you find, espically old ones are made of some super strong wood.....not cheap pine.
Thanks for the link to what looks to be an awesome vendor: I've been having a hard time finding any "small lots" exotics, which is exactly what those guys seem to specialize in.
I use oak, redgum and jarrah dowels and find that one dowell will hold 3 strings okay. I bolt them together and treat them like one piece of wood as I do the fret markers etc. I leave them bolted together at the headstock end and attach them to the box lid seperately.
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Thanks for the link to what looks to be an awesome vendor: I've been having a hard time finding any "small lots" exotics, which is exactly what those guys seem to specialize in.