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Bent up a sides today. Did it by hand on a pipe being paranoid from breaking it yesterday. Seems Tightbond Original did not like the amount of heat or steam I had to use in bending the side.



Once I had it clamped this much I was not going to give it a chance to spring back on me. Put a wet rag on it and used an old iron to steam it down.



The Supersoft suggests letting it sit for a day after application. I am not one to argue with them. So far so good, can't wait to get the second one bent.

You can WIN the St Louis 2017 fest swamp witch  

even if  you don't go  .. 

 LESS THAN A MONTH AWAY  !!!

THIS YEAR THEIR CHARITY WILL BE
SIX STRING HEROES.

They honor and assist injured U.S. military veterans suffering from PTSD through free guitars and guitar lessons.
Healing through music . The proceeds of this raffle will go to supplying free store bought  guitars to VETERANS IN NEED .
AND YOU CAN WIN THE SWAMP WITCH AND HELP A GREAT CAUSE AT THE SAME TIME .

Get your tickets folks, and  you may win  this years swamp witch raffle guitar . signed  in support and  understanding of  PTSD  by  folks that know it  all too well .    Veterans , police  , fireman , dispatchers  , first responders , EMS , service members  , and folks that care , etc etc etc  ...a combined effort  of Canadian and American supporters  .  with signatures added daily  .AND ..Gary Herget has added a wonderful , hand crafted case to go with it  . it will adorn signatures also .

THIS SWAMP WITCH GUITAR
WILL BE RAFFLED OFF
AT THE

2017 5th St. Louis MO. CBG Festival June 3, 2017

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

HWY 61 Roadhouse

Time: June 3, 2017 from 12pm to 6pm
Location: Hwy61roadhouse & Kitchen
Street: 34 S Old Orchard Ave.
City/Town: St. Louis, MO 63119
Website or Map: http://hwy61roadhouse.com
Phone: (314) 968-0061

.
VIDEO HERE http://www.cigarboxnation.com/video/2017-st-louis-fest-swamp-witch-guitar-win-it

details through emails  to smilingdog   smilingdogguitars@yahoo.com

or contact HIM  on FB on festival page. @ 2017 5th Annual St. Louis Cigar Box Guitar Festival.

OR  CONTACT HIM ON CBN . smilingdog1

 OR CONTACT Gary Herget ,or Bill Kunz ON CBN 

 OR ASK  ON THIS POST . 

Thought I would post this before I bend them. No plan B if I mess up.

Managed to get the pieces all joined without too much stress. Being that I had many joins to make and I did not have much in the way of extra to sand out if they were not close to perfect I modified my process. They turned out fine so now the next stressful operation, bending the sides. Softwoods do not like to bend much and will crease and crush on the inside turns. SuperSoft II really helps out from the one time I used it. Don't know what the proper temperature for using it is for me, not like I know where my thermometer is. I'll just listen for the water sizzling.

Some up to date pictures. Might as well take them before disaster falls upon me. What I have to work with.



I need to build a bender.



Thought of something while sitting here. Should thin out the cutaway side some. Sometimes it pays to step back and give yourself a time to think. Wish me luck.

Had to use a right angle jig and sandpaper to joint the sides, the jig I usually use was not long enough.

Doing the top and back pieces with my router. I but the joint edges against the bit and run the router along a straight edge. A bit of fiddling to get it set but I usually come away with a good glue joint.

Tomorrow I will surface them and hopefully make a bending jig for the sides.

Today I finished my first cigar box bass: four string, fretless, short scale 30". The neck is a sandwich of hard maple and walnut, and the fretboard is walnut. I used a tiny knot on the fretboard as the octave marker. Neck is finished with spray lacquer; fretboard is finished with oil & beeswax. 

The Mark Twain cigar box would have benefitted from a piezo pickup because it was pretty cool, but I sprayed it with several coats of lacquer and tried to keep Twain's face intact at least. The cigars weren't bad, by the way ... 

It's a through neck, and the bridge--a regular bass bridge--is screwed directly into it through the top. 

I had to remove the hinges to fit the lid directly down onto the neck. I also glued filler blocks to the neck inside the box to help balance the bass a little ... though it's still neck-heavy. 

Sounds pretty good to me, but I don't play bass, much less fretless. I'm looking forward to hearing my friend play it when he takes possession. 

Ask any questions ... 

The 2x4 was a little damp and gummed up my blade. Have a fan on them trying to dry them out. Cut the 2x4 in half and resawed one for backs, tops and linings. Cut two lengths for the sides and that left about a 1" board to make the neck, braces and stuff. Think I am going to make an 00 sized guitar, aprox. 19" body length, 14.5" lower bout.

I saw the post on making a ukulele and I thought I would like to do it, a simple build that won't take too much time. I was suppose to make one at a uke forum when they had a thread on building them. One thing lead to another, I glued a couple of pieces of wood together for the neck, put it aside for a different project, will have to show you guys that one when it gets going. Looked through my stash of 2 x 4's, I have kept my eye out for any that would be half useful to build an instrument. Decided on one.

Actually as quartered as you are going to find and the grain is not too bad. Started cutting it into useful pieces and it gummed up my blade. I was planing on giving it a year or two to dry out to the moisture level to build an instrument. Hope to dry out the cut pieces will dry out by putting a fan on them. Or maybe put them in the oven but then they have to re-hydrate again to be useful. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

I left everybody with an unsightly mess on the guitar. But there was a method to my madness.

Here are some of the last bits and pieces, the bridge and the tailpiece.

Ran out of time so the bridge is not set up for intonation, I'll need to play with it a while. The frets have to be done and the pickup is not connected to anything. I have some ideas how I want to do the volume and tone control, the output jack I still am debating on.

And my glamor shots of the guitar.

I still need to do some work on it but I am going to have to do stuff I have been putting off while doing this project. Dishes, laundry, normal stuff.

I am just catching up on posting although the pace is crazy. Not much time for reflection and determining if my next action will work or not. Speaking of.
I had the painters give me some raw tint to put int paint, was suppose to be good for water based and oil paint. It didn't seem to like the wipe on poly and instead of mixing stayed as mini globules as I mixed it. I went with it anyway , first doing a yellow coat and then when dry doing an halo orange coat. I could see it wasn't going to work, was not sure how I was going to get my sunburst. I stripped the paint off and started over. Instead of mixing the tint with poly I added water to the tint and applied it to the guitar. When dry I wiped on a layer of poly, did the same thing for the orange and black coats. I sure hope this was going to work as it is Thursday and I have till Saturday afternoon to get the guitar finished. I asked my brother to take pictures of it then.

While paint dried I continued on with the cover plate. I should have used a smaller drill bit to drill out the numbers, live and learn. Definitly a hand made look, need to figure out what paint to use on it also. Gluing the 'handle' of the cover. Using flamed maple for it also.


That is all for now, a bucket full of work to do this morning.

Routed out the binding ledge. Decided to use some flamed maple I have, never bent it before.



Messy bench, I'll get to it later. I have my masking tape ready to hold down the binding, using fish glue, another first. I have a bending iron in the vice to touch up the maple binding. It sprung back as shown in the previous picture.

Seems to be going well.


And it all wrapped up along with starting to shape the neck


I leveled the sides and scraped down the binding.

I'll keep the mushroom posts in mind although I doubt I will get much movement on such a small instrument with how I built it.

So I had the idea to hammer form the resonator cover out of the aluminum. Seemed like a good idea, would have been easier with thinner aluminum. Had a piece of fir plywood that I carved the dome shape out of, used a hand plane and worked up a sweat. That was premium old growth fir ply. It was easy enough figuring out if I needed to take off more from one side or the other. Just make nice little circles, sand it smooth.



Doesn't look much like it but there is a dome there. Next file and sand it smooth. Need to figure out some type of hole pattern to let the sound out.

A few more pictures. Don't know how to brace the top, it's not like a normal acoustic with the sound hole. With the well the hole portion of the top is fairly stiff. So the points above and below are the flexible parts. Basically you want to limit the movement of the top trying to fold in on itself requiring a neck reset. Tied the neck block to the well which stiffened the top up. Not a heck of a lot of stress from four strings with a short scale length but I am building this so you can swap out the neck for a six string. The Back is normal ladder braced.

I think it is time for some F-holes. The first one took forty minutes to do, the second less than 20. On the first one I figured out the shape and learned how much the files took away, the second one went smoothly.

Added a pickup between the F holes. Found a piece of walnut for the fretboard. Spent quite a while getting the neck joint to the body right. The sugar pine has wide soft and hard grain lines and you end up removing too much of the soft when you want to get rid of some of the hard wood.

Also in the picture is a piece of aluminum that I want to make a resonator cover out of.

Not sure how this forum works, but this will be my build sequence of building my entry.

Great! Two weeks into the contest and I decide to give it a try. Played around with some door skins thinking to build out of it, finally decided to use some parts where I took a wrong turn on and doubt I would build from them but can't seem to toss them out. Some baked maple sides and a neck glued up from sugar pine I salvaged from a pallet.

I am using Baltic Birch plywood for the top and back.

Routed out a soundwell out of some plywood. Might have got a little carried away with the clamps.

I was a vendor at my first guitar show this past weekend. The show had a minor handmade music theme and was headlined by Justin Johnson, who had a booth, did a clinic and presented the final concert of the day. The show directors contacted me to ask if I’d be interested in donating one of my guitars as a giveaway item to be signed - and potentially played - by Justin. Since I live only 70 miles from the venue, I jumped at it. Arranged for the donation, reserved a booth and started flinging sawdust in the garage.

I had some idea of what to expect, but I’d like to share my observations on the day and get some feedback from those of you who sell at shows. I’m considering another VERY large craft fair in October, so any and all comments from voices of experience are helpful. Thanks in advance.

Design philosophy

I don’t mean to be all high and mighty about this, but I do have some specific design targets. Anything I put up for sale has to be solid, eminently playable, intonated and ready to go off the rack. Frets are smooth, action is good and no buzzes/rattles. There’s a fair amount of time and care put into each instrument and, as such, they’re a little pricier than some. On the flip side, my CBGs are somewhat plain - nothing like some of the woodwork art I see from various builders on this site (and kudos to you - you’ve got mad skills). My CBGs are more of a modern tribute to an instrument from another time.

Amplification

With only one exception, all of my instruments had pickups, so plugging in was easy. I had done a hipster-ish craft fair the previous month and used my Roland Micro-Cube amp. It was just ok. So this time, I brought a larger amp, but as you can imagine, at a large guitar show, everyone is randomly playing something - sometimes really loud. Playing acoustically and truly getting a feel for it was out of the question, so I amped just about everything throughout the day. The amp in question was one of those Fender G-things. Louder, yes, but not a fan. Next time, I need something that’s easy to use, plenty loud and sounds good in both acoustic and electric modes. May have to build it myself…

Reaction

I brought an accomplished player and friend with me to the show. He owns one of my CBGs and can really make them sing. Whenever he would plug in and let it rip, he always drew a crowd. Lots of smiles and we always managed to get a few in people's hands to play with. While I can’t say it necessarily accounted for a sale, it did catch the attention of the crowd. I really should learn to play what I make, huh?

Education

Here’s a conversation I had many, many times through the day:

Me (to onlooker): Have you ever seen/played a cigar box guitar before?
Them: No, I haven’t (didn’t know they existed, etc)
Me: Well, today’s your lucky day! Which one catches you eye?
Them: Uhhh… that one’s pretty.
Me: (hands them a guitar)
Them: I wouldn’t even know where to start
Me: Do you play at all?
Them: Yes (or no. Usually, if it was a no, they were lying for some reason)

Then, I would quickly explain the open tuning, notes on the strings and barre chords. Handed them a pick and turned them loose. Every last one of them was making music in a matter of 30 seconds or so. The real players, even faster. Usually with a big, stupid grin on their face. It was fun to watch - and I watched it over and over again.

Other Vendors

There were a handful of other builders at the show, but also vendors who carried mainline gear + some CBG stuff. All of them came by to “check out the competition”. Some just wanted to see what I had and what it sold for. Others played a few and we talked shop. Everyone was friendly and it was fun to talk handmade instruments with people who truly knew what that meant.

Sales

I had only a few sales, but they more than covered my costs and left a reasonable amount in my bank account, so that was good. Specifically, one CB Uke, one CBG, one license plate guitar and one 2x4 lap steel. Pretty sure I could have sold a couple more of those, but that was the only one I had on hand.

Without exception, every one of my sales was to a man, accompanied by his wife. In every case, the wife said something like “why don’t you just get it”? Brings a smile to my face. The last sale of the day, while the dude was sitting and noodling away, his wife pulled me aside, asked if I took plastic and handed me her card. The transaction was done before he even knew he was the proud owner of a license plate guitar. Fun stuff.

I was just sure one of the big-time guitar vendor dudes was going to buy a CB uke. He came over to play it twice and he wanted it bad. But he was waffling between mine and a “real” uke in the same price range. I worked him hard, but ultimately he bought neither. Bummer.

In the End

It was a good show and a good experience. Made some sales, met lots of nice folks, passed out a bunch of business cards and my Facebook page likes/views are up considerably. Would totally do it again. But, building to sell is different than building for fun. Hoping some of you veterans have some tips and advice on how to refine the process, increase sales and spread the CBG joy. Plus, my wife would love to have fewer instruments in the house...

'Voodoo Stick', the Chonkinfeckle CBG album and pdf book! For those who don't know us, we're a UK based duo & one half, Les Hilton suffered two strokes 4 months ago.
Now he has managed to finish it, and its now available as a free download. All we ask is if you possibly make a small donation to the charity 'Stroke Association' here in the UK who do a sterling job with Stroke victims All the links can be found on the page link below
MANY THANKS!!
http://youcanukeandmore.weebly.com/

Billy Wise test piloting the electric banjola, Joan Kirkham on the guitar, and Myself on the Washtub.

Thanks for the welcome guys.I'm new to social media and I'm not shure about what Im doing.I'm trying to learn so bear with me.

Someone out there living near Clinton, Tennessee, site of the Museum of Appalachia, with its great collection of traditional musical instruments? For a first impression, check the documentation about this treasure on http://www.cigarboxnation.com/video/museum-slideshow.

To study the details of the presented instruments, to refer to a single instrument, a busy slide show is far from ideal, it would be nice to have a collection of good photos with the corresponding descriptions and additional comments.

Interested to spend a day at the museum for a documentation for Cigar Box Nation? Any suggestion what I could offer you in exchange? Please leave me a message on Moritz Voegeli's Page.