Well, on Monday (today's Wednesday) I went to Kansas City to a cigar store and picked up 8 cigar boxes for $24.00 plus tax. Three bucks apiece. Stopped by the hardwood lumber yard (Schutte) in KC and bought two poplar 1x2 and a red oak 2x2, all four feet long. Laid 'em out in the shop to look at and make a decision. Picked a couple boxes for my first two CBG's, measured the top thickness, and cut fretboards on the bandsaw. Then came in and mortgaged the farm to CB Gitty.
The plan is to let the fret boards equal the box top thickness rather than to have to notch the neck to fit up even. Just glue the neck to the back of the top and then glue the fret boards to the face of the neck so it all comes out even. One of the boxes is pretty fancy and has a curvy top edge on it. Having a separate fret board will let me file down the end of the fret board to match the curves of the box. That one will be the second guitar.
Yesterday I got seriously to work. Cut the holes in both ends of box #1 to fit the neck. For that I used a Fein MultiMaster to cut parallel to the box top through the edge board, then marked down with a try square and sawed those two notches with a little tiny Japanese pull saw. Then I closed the box and marked through the hole on the interior lip, opened the box back up, sawed slots down that lip from above, and cut the long line with a chisel,
Next I sanded the saw marks off the front (top) face of the fret board and softened the corners on the top face of the fret board.
That was it for one day. I'm doing some actual work around the place, too, so I didn't have all day to play with a CBG, but more to the point I was at the end of my knowledge. I didn't know how to lay out the neck and fret board.
So-o-o-o-o-o... I came up to the house, snooped a bit on Cigar Box Nation, found a link to StewMac's Fret Position Calculator, and did some calculating. I printed out a few different choices of fret counts for a 24" scale and then spent some more time on CBN reading about people's experience with, and thoughts about, fret counts. I can maybe accomplish some more today.
