Hey all,
Its been a long journey, but I recently finished my first CBG Build (Name: BOOMSTICK) Sorry about pic quality, taken with phone.
Went with a partial neck-through design on a 20th anniversary Perdomo Cigar Box.
Neck is built with dark walnut. Decorative piece of cedar in the head stock. Tru-oil finish
Heel is ply'd walnut and poplar.
Fretboard is black palm. Decorative piece of poplar on box-side. Rubbed with lemon oil, otherwise no finish.
Top of the original box was smashed with a hammer, build a new top with walnut borders and lauan 5mm ply. Box/top finished with rub-on poly.
Cover art: Ash (played by the amazing Bruce Campbell) from the movie Army of Darkness (if you have not seen, go see now)
Has the Disc-O-Tone Pickup with Volume pot sold by CB Gitty - placed it just under the bass side of bridge with doublesided foam tape it comes with. Incredible sound and volume control when plugged into amp. If you are new to building and new to pickups with no soldering experience, buy it, install it, love it.
Bridge is the pre-made zebrawood one sold by CB Gitty - a christmas indulgence, very happy with the product, nice look when finished. Bone Nut also from CB Gitty.
Used the Shane Speal signature tuners which I am very happy with, these are another excellent deal from CB Gitty - no-brainer for my future builds. Although if you order, know that this arrangement is 2 left 1 right (I thought was opposite).
Had a whole bunch of hiccups in building this things. Literally smashed the original box top with hammer trying to force the sound hole grommets. My first neck warped after bringing it in from my cold garage - planed this down with my jointer and currently going into my 2nd build (fretless).
All the decorative hardware, grommets, ferrules and corner pieces were bought from CB Gitty.
Hinges and pull-latches bought at Home depot.
Thanks for all the comments on the pics I posted last week.
Thanks to CB Gitty, these guys are great, spend your money here. Very good products, reasonably priced stuff, come quickly.
A special thanks to the members of Cigar Box Nation without whom I never would have been able to build this thing. Special shout-out to Ron "Oily" Sprague, Chickenbone John for their prompt and helpful responses and to Dan Sleep for his videos.
Been playing it constantly and am amazed at how great this thing sounds acoustically. Seriously growls through the amplifier. I simply can not put it down. Of all the things I've ever built, I am the most proud of this. All of my six strings are now collecting dust.
Last thing to do is find a cool Volume Pot Knob to fit the theme, any ideas for this are welcome.
Thanks again all,
BC
Replies
Beautiful! What is your woodworking experience? That's not the work of a beginner to woodworking! BTW, I vote for the shotgun shell knob.
My father is custom woodworker. Does a lot of custom cabinet building and such. Learned most everything from him in his shop. My personal woodworking experience is mostly furniture building - beds, tables, cabinets, etc...a lot of honey-do stuff. This is my first instrument build.
Definitely going with a shotgun shell for the knob, now...where to get a spent shotgun shell casing?
Try a local skeet/trap club. If you can't find something let me know and I'll send you some.
Since it is a zombie movie theme on it, why not take an action figure, and cut the head off, paint it up as a zombie head with model paint and drill a hole in it to fit the shaft for your knob?
Thanx for all the great ideas for the knobs. I love the Zeke Deadwood, Dan, very cool looking. I'll post pics of the knob when I finally get it done.
Next build should be done in a few days, will post some pics, will be a 3 string fretless. Then its on to building my daughters 4 string fretted, will make an attempt at a home built box for that one. Yaaay, I love having a new obsession.
Very Nice Job...
OMG, this is a great idea. I'm going to have to really think about this. I am not an artist, but there must be a way to go about this.
Ha ha I think that would be quite an undertaking!
You could use the skull knobs like I used for Zeke Deadwood.
http://www.cigarboxnation.com/photo/100-0001-3?context=user