build - Blogs - Cigar Box Nation

First ever build

Posted by Holly Hodson on November 29, 2017 at 5:25pm

As of 1 hour ago I have officially completed my FIRST EVER build.

The last time I built literally anything was when I made a box as part of my technology GCSE coursework - a box with countless nails sticking out and faux-fur matted with black paint. A box that broke no less than 4 industrial staplers and a saw in order to complete. A box that has meant I have been labelled as someone with no craft ability for about 13 years!!

I started on 08/11/17, and worked a couple hours every Wednesday with some help from my dad.

Before and after:

Neck - some sort of hardwood.

Body - Habanos Romeo y Julieta

It's got dual piezo's stuck in and it sounds pretty sweet through my crappy old amp. Will be testing it fully tomorrow when my sisters ain't sleeping.

Tried my hand at pyrography - never even seen a pyrography set before, but I've burnt on the frets and some logos here and there.

The action was too high originally, but I switched out the nut for something smaller and now it can be played - more or less - slide and fingered, which is pretty cool.

There's some imperfections, but all in all I think it went pretty well. I've got 4 more boxes, loads of neck-wood, and 1 more set of strings, so I'll hopefully be starting #2 fairly soon - gotta finish my Les Paul (copy) kit first!

Going to try and figure out how to play slide and record video as soon as possible!

New Guy - First Build

Posted by Kigar on December 29, 2015 at 9:09pm

Hi all, just joined this group after taking for a while I thought I would try to give some back. I have made a few projects so far, this is the first....

My First Cigar Box Guitar

After stumbling across the whole Cigar Box Guitar thing (not sure where I originally found it) I decided to make one. I got into making bows a few years ago and while I still enjoy it there comes a point where making another meets the quantity I already have x the effort x skill and so on. Having said that, I am making another over this winter, just slower and less urgently.

For the CBG, I had a decent stock of wood for necks and such and a trip to a cigar store got me a Underhill box. I kept it fairly simple with a 1x2 oak thru neck, rivets to secure the strings, cheapo tuners, a eye bolt for the bridge – later made into wood – and a sawed off screw for the nut. Fairly plain overall. No frets. Spray varnish on the box really made the wood look good. It sounds good but a little quiet, no action at all, slide playing only.

Goals – make a CBG that actually played.

Good – it was fun and a lot of small problem solving for various design elements. I was happy how it turned out.

Bad – nothing really bad, although it would have been great to be able to fret a note. I wanted to keep it simple the first time.

Learnings - The eye bolt had coarse threads and the strings buzzed a bit. The wood bridge sounded a little better I think. I originally tried a low G and D with high upper G and didn’t care for it. Using the 3, 4, and 5 strings from a regular guitar set was better for me. In hindsight I didn’t need the corner braces, and didn’t need to screw down the lid. Add I wanted to make more! And use blue tape on everything while filing, measuring, drilling etc, it lets you write freely with big marks while protecting the rest of the wood.

I’ll work my way through the builds I have made so far, let me know if more or less info is better.

Murdoc_420's Progress

Posted by Murdoc_420 on February 12, 2016 at 2:45pm

Guess this is the best place to start a progress thread so here we go.

I've been wanting to build a CBG for quite awhile now, past attempts to find boxes were futile but I now have found a box supplier near me :D

I found this selection of boxes, found this site of course and started watching tutorials on You Tube.

(I was hoping to find one cool box and walked out with 7, yikes!)

Going to start with the Hoyo de Monterrey and have almost everything I need to follow Unstrung13's tutorial. Hopefully I'll be on that within a few days. It seemed to be the simplest tutorial so I figured the best place to start.

Of course the Brickhouse needs to be a Bass :D (which is my main goal for this endeavor. I'll make that one electric and get a few nice parts (gold volume knob) and tuners from CBNG.

My favorite though is the Chillin' Moose'. Sweet little box, but it's small so I figure probably more of a Uke scale, definitely electric, probably piezo.

I think I'll try a stomp box with the baccarat, though I'll probably use it more as a 'slap box'.

I'd like to turn the Romeo into an amp, but I'm getting ahead of my self.

I'll post some pics of progress and or finished g when it's ready :)

Four times a RGB part #2

Posted by Gerrit Klaassen on June 14, 2015 at 8:30am

Unloading wood in the middle of the night.

It's hard to find the right wood here in Portugal. Thanks to a local furniture maker we got some leftovers...(well at a certain price that is). 2 pieces of Faia (beech) and some pieces of Mogno (Mahogany) I guess we can get 10 guitar-necks out of it.

It's been a very hot day, the day of hunting for some "guitar-neck material".

36 degrees Celsius during that sunny day, so we've waited until the middle of the night to unload. The 4 boxes are getting to their completion and soon it will be time to make one 6-string, two 4-string and one 3-string neck.

As always they will be completed with our own "Fado-style" tuners, although it will be a first time we'll make a 6-string head.

The design's aren't clear yet, it all depends on what's on the recycling shelves...

Guitar #10 rebuilt

Posted by Richey Kay on February 16, 2014 at 5:58am

This was my 10th guitar, and my first serious attempt at a 4 stringer:

I was never really happy with it: the box I had made (out of 6mm ply and 3mm sapele for the soundboard) was big and a bit unwieldy, I had also originally intended to have only 9 holes on either side but unfortunately a beer and drill related accident meant I had to add more to make it symmetrical.

I also had a couple of problems with this guitar - the neck was not secured well enough to the box and there was some uplift on the neck. Not a bow in the wood as such, but it was making the action uncomfortably high. I also managed to leave it leaned against an external wall in very cold wet weather, and the damp made the soundboard all spongy and raised the grain on the neck. You could say I had some bad luck with this build.

I worked on a couple of other projects for a while and came back to this one, with the intention to rebuild the box. I started by making a pickup for it:

Well, I made a couple of pickups... the one on the right is obviously the one for the 4 stringer. I used a scrap of oak from the fretboard for the top of the bobbin. 6400 wines of 42AWG and alnico 5 magnets. I was going for a nice mellow tone on this one so I didn't want to overwind.

I had a couple of pre-made plain craft boxes left over so I planned to use on of those. The only problem is they don't sound good (very thick lid etc). I planed off the original lid and made a new one out of the same solid sapele stock I used for the original. I used a bit of Rustin's walnut stain on the box to make it look a bit more interesting.

This pic shows the underside of the soundboard. I glued two 100mm strips together and used 5x6.5mm spruce strips for the bracing. The hole at the top is for the pickup. I added a scrap of 6.5mm thick sapele to act as extra support under the bridge to counter the extra tension of 4 strings.

I glued the new lid on, attached the neck (very securely) to the bottom of the box and finished everything with a few coats of Danish oil.

...and that's the finished article; 4 strings tuned GDgb, 4 pole pickup, volume & tone control.

Sound holes - just 6 this time, I used 6mm inside diameter grommets from a leather craft supplier on eBay. You might notice the magnets are a bit wonky on the pickup. Not intentional! Sounds fine though.

The bridge is made from a scrap of oak from the fretboard and a tiny strip of bone from a guitar saddle blank (I get 4 CBG bridges from one blank). I just use a drill to make the bridge 'arches' and sand it to a point. Volume (A250k) and tone (B250K) control with a .047uF Sprague Orange Drop capacitor. The tailpiece is a bit of sapele with a piece of brass sheet glued to it. The string ferrules are bike spoke nipples. The copper plate is connected to the ground on the back of the volume pot.

I loved working with sapele for this neck. Compared to oak it cuts like butter with a spokeshave and smells lovely. I'll definitely order some next time!

To make this headstock I cut a section out of the top of the neck blank and glued it to the bottom, then shaped it with rasps and sandpaper.

That's it. Now I can get back to playing it!

Rick

Rand Moore's Cigar Box Ukulele Project 2, Part 1

Posted by Rand Moore on August 10, 2010 at 1:00am

Hi All.

I completed my Cigar Box Ukulele Project 1. The instrument turned out pretty good, but because I chickened out and only put diatonic fretting on the neck, I discovered that it makes ukulele playing a lot more confusing rather than simplifying it. Perhaps, with GCEA tuning, diatonic fretting doesn't work. I know I was confused, so I re-tuned it to "D-A-d-d" and used a nut and bridge set up to support dual course melody strings spaced 1/8'' apart from each other and 3/8'' apart from "middle" string (which is 3/8'' away from the bass string). So, it ended up as a short necked stick dulcimer (strum stick) with dual course melody strings and diatonic scale. I actually like playing the instrument a lot, except a lot of song tabs also use notes off string 2 which is a single string, so it sounds "odd" switching from single string to dual coursed and back periodically thru the song. So, I'm thinking of doing a 5-string long neck string dulcimer with dual course melody and middle strings, and a single bass string. Or, maybe dual course everything, but then the melody won't stand out so much from the drone strings.

Well, I have been a bit side-lined due to frustration over my poor woodworking skills. Then I decided to read up on woodworking in general on the Internet, and one of the articles I came across was the need of a good, solid workbench. This rang a bell with me, because the table I was using as a workbench is really shaky. It was built out of junk wood collected by my father-in-law and just nailed together. So, I have modified the table so that the back side is more rigid, and have added some additional pieces so that the table fits well tightly against the front porch wood railing, so essentially I'm using part of the house to stabilize the work bench. It also now has a 26'' wide x 13'' deep x 1'' thick "marble" top, so it's a lot more steady now. I have also sacrificed some wood to use on my workbench to help me hold my work piece tightly. I have no vice, and only 2 clamps, so I have to get creative sometimes in terms of how to clamp things down and hold my workpieces steady so I can cut them accurately. The results have been pretty good, so now I am starting up another Cigar Box Ukulele project. This time a tenor cigar box uke, with a 17" scale length.

The other thing I want to build is a hardwood miter box with 15 degree and 90 degree cut angles. But, I think I'll wait and make it in China as my collection of tools, parts and instruments has grown significantly and I need to port it home in my luggage. That's in 9 days. So, I'll wind up my current Cigar Box Ukulele project (project 2) and then carefully pack everything for my return trip.

-------------

For CBU Project 2, the neck will be an inch longer, and the bridge on the box will be moved back to about 2/3s of the way to the "tail piece". This will provide a 17'' scale length. As I recall, the string spacing is a slight bit wider on a tenor uke, but I'm planning to use 3/8'' sting spacing like on my concert uke. I feel more comfortable with that string spacing. However, I like the idea of having a longer scale as when I playing up the neck, I'll have more room for my fat fingers. On my last project, the last few fret positions get hard to play, so hopefully a longer scale length will help correct for that. A 17'' scale length is also about the same scale length as a prima balalaika, so I'm thinking that down the road a bit, I may try to make it imitate a balalaika by using balalaika sized strings and tuning. This instrument will definitely be chromatically fretted. Here's a diagram.

Notice the changes in my design of the sound box. A single large sound hole in the middle replaces two smaller ones on either side of the strings. This is made possible by doing away with the through-the-body neck. Instead, I have beefed up the side of the cigar box which will receive the head/neck assembly, which will be attached using two 2'' long #10 wood screws. What is not shown in the diagram is a 2'' heel attached to the bottom side of the neck to make this connection stronger. Here is a diagram of that.

Also notice that the bridge & tail piece has be redesigned into a single piece and is backed up on the bottom side of the sound board with another board to distribute the strain of the string tension better. I'm also thinking of mounting a pair of piezo pickups under the bridge, possibly as part of the bridge assembly. But, I have not yet decided to do it as some people say it will sound better if the piezo pickups are mounted to the soundboard away from the bridge as they will be less sensitive to other noise (I assume on the strings, like pick strike noise on the strings). So, likely I will need to do some experimenting; again, once I'm back home in China. My soldering irons, heat glue gun, etc. are over there.

Well, that's the plan for now. Have to go now.

- Rand.

3-String Headstock Design #1, Part 2

Posted by Rand Moore on July 4, 2010 at 6:00pm

Once you have a board prepared for use as the headstock (as described in the previous post), you need to decide how you will be attaching it to the neck and how you will be installing the tuning machines (tuners).

Let's start by discussing how I plan to connect the headstock to the neck. As you may recall from the first post, my neck and neck stock both have a 22 degree cut (plus or minus a degree), revealing a sloped surface about 2 inches long. The question is how the headstock will be positioned relative to the neck for gluing. Here are the four possibilities:

Here's my first diagram, and when positioning the two pieces relative to each other. Notice how this "method" tilts the headstock down by about 20 degrees, like many guitar heads. The reasoning for doing this is based on hearsay (not first hand scientific testing), and the story goes that the strings will stay in the groves of the nut better and that the strings won't buzz at the nut. I really don't know. It's likely just an old luthier's tales. But modeling an instrument after traditional design practices are more likely to produce a better instrument. So, I'm planning for a 20-25 degree tilt in the head relative to the neck.

However, I don't really like how exposed (visible) the head-to-neck joint will be. This is better illustrated in the diagram below (circled in red). I think this placement will look ugly without doing a lot of work with wood putty, bondo, or some other "filler" to round out and sculpt the joint to make it look better. But, that may make the problem worse should I go to stain and varnish the wood. So, at this point, I'll skip this method and move on to the next possibility.

The next head-to-neck positioning possibility places the headstock over the neck, hiding most of the ugly head-to-neck joint. This is how I'm going to do mine.

Like the first method, this second method tilts the headstock downward about 20 degrees or so, like a real guitar. But, unlike the first "method", this "method" hides the ugly neck joint under the headstock, making it a lot less noticeable as shown in the diagram below (see the red circled area).

There are a couple other possibilities... but they don't provide the traditional headstock tilt found on most guitars and other lutes. I have tried this third option on a "soda can on a stick" variety canjo and it worked pretty well, especially when I did a similar cut and join on the "tail" end of the canjo stick for the "strum hollow" and the can resonator. The net effect of this canjo design was to raise the "fret board" area of the neck up closer to the strings for easier playing action. This design would also allow you to sit your canjo down and it would rest on the flat lower head an lower "tail" sections, assuming you mount your tuners so the knobs point out to the side and the gears are recessed into the headstock. Issues for another article/post, I guess. The down side of positioning option 3 is that the ugly neck joint is again starring you in the face.

Well, the fourth method doesn't make much sense, but if you had to have a flat head-to-neck layout, it could be done; and the ugly neck joint would be mostly hidden by the headstock.

Okay, now that I have decided how to connect the headstock to the neck, I going to hold off on actually attaching the two pieces until I have finished drilling holes for mounting the tuners in the headstock, and until after I add frets to the neck. Adding frets with a 20 degree downward tilt in the neck is more difficult unless you've build some kind of "rig" to hold the neck steady without putting pressure on the headstock.

[As a note, when I do glue to two pieces together, I also will screw them together using a short wood screw. Want to mention that now in case I forget mentioning it later. The screw hole comes through the bottom of the neck through the headstock where the two pieces join along their sloped sides.]

A Big Thank You

Posted by Dianne Woods on February 4, 2010 at 2:13pm

Thank you everyone who helped me with my first build. I couldn't have done it without yall. You took up your time to explain things, took pics, and answered my questions. I can't remember who all helped me. Thank you very much. Thank you for being patient with me. Go to my page and check it out. I named my first build, Sweetheart. Thanks again. Dianne/Georgia

CBG first time build - post #1

Posted by Stone Barnard on December 20, 2010 at 10:00am

Note: I realized after posting that the links will take you away from this page.

Hey there! This is the first post in a blog I will be keeping to document my first CBG build. As many of you reading this from Cigar Box Nation have been through this process many years ago I thought it would be fun to include you in my account of earning my 'strings'. (hahah.. strings, wings,that was good right?) Hopefully I can show other new comers that anybody can indeed build something that is useful and beautiful. I must add that I was an industrial design major in college, so I have a little more skill then the average person in building things. But my knowledge of these instruments is the same as anyone who has never seen one in person. Hopefully I will recruit several of you to assist me in my process. I will be taking as many pictures as I can and keeping the blog updated at least once a week.

As I learned in Design School several years ago, the best place to start is with an idea. Since I do not have an extensive background in instruments, specifically guitars, I knew I needed to look at as many examples as possible to get the idea in the first place. A quick run on Wikipedia.com produced a nice little history of the CBG and a picture that I found really useful.

I knew that this style of guitar could be made in many different styles, but I did not expect to find the traditional versions so simple. I do find the idea of a simple build pleasing because the chance of success would be improved. However, I do not wish to construct something from a kit or that would not gain the attention of a seasoned vet. Out of all the simple builds available on the internet my favorite so far has been by GuitarIsMyLife with a nice breakdown of the several components. I also came across the documentary Songs Inside The Box which I will definitely look into, although there are plenty of pictures of these amazing instruments there is little about the people who build them.

So my first task is going to be to design my CBG and see if it would be functional and what elements of the design would need to be changed. I'm also going to begin putting together a parts list with prices to develop an overall idea for the cost of the build. Again my goal here is not to produce a 'how to' but to document the process one would go through when attempting their first build.

Until next time.

-Stone 'Barnyard' Barnard

Dreaming...

Posted by Josh on March 3, 2010 at 7:11am

Had a dream about classes showing kids to building their own instruments (CBGs, flutes/recorders, stomp boxes (and other drums), kalimbas, etc.) and then teaching them how to play.

"Imagine..." - John Lennon

build (10)

First ever build

New Guy - First Build

Murdoc_420's Progress

Four times a RGB part #2

Unloading wood in the middle of the night.

Guitar #10 rebuilt

Rand Moore's Cigar Box Ukulele Project 2, Part 1

3-String Headstock Design #1, Part 2

A Big Thank You

CBG first time build - post #1

Dreaming...

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