Build a guitar with no Glue?

[gerberguitars]

Hello all. I've been thinking about the challenge of building a steel string guitar, without the use of any sort of adhesive or fasteners such as bolts and screws. This is just the way my mind works. I look for challenges, and I love to daydream about how the given challenge may be overcome. Has anyone else thought about this? Has anyone made an attempt to do so?

As I think through the process there are certain parts that could easily be overcome. For instance, the fretboard could be left out of the equation and the neck material could be the fretboard. But I wouldn't want to make it that easy. I would want the challenge of using joinery, in some fashion or another, to use a separate material as is customary.

The braces could prove to be difficult, but again, I'm not looking for an easy way out. I'm not talking about building an archtop guitar with minimal braces and a floating bridge and tailpiece. So do they get dovetailed in place? Do they float and become fastened the the top and back in some other way? What new construction methods may come as a result of having to overcome a seemingly impossible challenge?

What about the bridge? The end block?

I'm curious to hear thoughts from other builders. What do you think would be the most difficult part of the build? Does it sound interesting to you? What ideas come to your minds when you think about the many work-arounds that would be necessary?

[runamuck]

Wood can be attached to wood with joinery not needing adhesive. I've made plenty of furniture that way. Take a dovetail for example, or a sliding, french dovetail specifically.

You can make a sliding dovetail extremely tight, say at 50% humidity. But what happens when the humidity drops is that the joint loosens. When the parts are relatively large as in a piece of furniture, there's some room for that sort of movement without joints falling apart. But in a guitar, where the pieces are small and there are large stresses, it's an entirely different thing.

To build a guitar that sounds like a guitar as we know it, with string tension that we're accustomed to, well, you're wanting to do something just not possible, in my opinion.

[rogthefrog]

How will you join the two halves of the top (and back) together? I know Howard Klepper has done a dovetail-everywhere mixed-woods guitar, but I suspect he used glue, too.

More importantly, how will you attach the braces?

For this to truly work without any glue, you may need to make an unbraced guitar, which would mean a significant arch on both the top and the back for structural integrity under tension. It may be more realistic to call it an archtop rather than a "flat-top" acoustic guitar.

If you can get the arch top and back joined to the ribs, then I expect attaching the neck, a floating bridge and a tailpiece without glue is pretty easy.

[gitarro]

Now this is a project that will really be an innovation ! I hope this one goes underway soon.

[jessupe]

Velcro?

[Ozzy the dog]

Good luck with this, will watch with interest and hope you come up with some innovative ideas.

If not you could always use the FORCE... or Duct Tape - it too has a dark side and a light side and holds the universe together.

[invguy921]

Originally Posted by Ozzy the dog

Good luck with this, will watch with interest and hope you come up with some innovative ideas.

If not you could always use the FORCE... or Duct Tape - it too has a dark side and a light side and holds the universe together.

Now that cracked me up . Truth of the matter is, most of us can not imagine that possibility, and to me it seems illogical to even try it...certainly not on the entire guitar But, if you do, all eyes will be watching.

[Mark Hatcher]

It would be fun to make wooden press fit geared tuners!
I can think of ways to do everything else.
You know, I'm trying to build guitars today and you've infested my mind with this!
Somebody put up $8,000 and I'll make you one. No lifetime warranty
No 2 day approval period

Mark

[ukejon]

If you had a crazy interlocking fine grain on the soundboard and back it might be possible to carve the braces, perhaps tapered or pyrimidical in cross-section, out of the solid. But such a wood, certainly a hardwood, might not be very good sonically. Attaching the sides, back, and soundboard together would still be a trick! Would you be allowed to used trunnels, or tiny wooden pins in the manner of early Germanic furniture that had no nails? If so, then the side could be carved thicker at the top and bottom where traditional glue strips/blocks would be added....but then you probably couldn't bend the sides without pre-removing wood from this thicker area to allow for the bend.

[LSemmens]

It's easy to build a guitar without using glue, They're called ELECTRIC guitars. Of course, CF is now also a valid option. Thinking about it, even a resonator should also be able to be made with out glue, (welding, on the other hand)

[Tim McKnight]

In your OP you left out the materials that you are considering. My initial responses are based on using common woods used to build guitars today. This is a challenging thought which I am sure could be accomplished to varying degrees of success. However, many stumbling blocks will be hurdles to overcome. Most of the joints would need to be mechanical in design so tension or compression retains them in accurate position. How would the joints stay connected if you lost compression and tension forces? You could use mechanical joints combined with tapered pins, keys or wedges. The additional mechanical "locks" could retain those joints in position. Most mechanical joints, like dovetails, would likely need to be more massive to sustain the compression, tension, rotating and twisting forces imparted to the body and joints by the strings. Keep in mind that weight is the enemy, in a responsive guitar and I see that obstacle an equal challenge in joint design.

When dissimilar woods are used in a joint, each wood is likely to react differently in naturally occurring humidity changes. This could cause additional movement in the joints which could lead to joint failure. If the guitar lived in a hermetically sealed atmosphere then I doubt one would need to be concerned but in reality humidity could be your worst enemy in this project if you don't think outside the materials box.

Finally ... alternative materials: You could remove the uncontrollability and variation of plant based materials by incorporating materials which have far less variation than wood. For instance, plastics, composites, Kevlar, Carbon Fiber, HPL's, aerospace metals, etc... I believe Rainsong tried combining CF and wood, early on, but found it was a failure due to joining dissimilar materials which exhibited greater movement than the joint adhesives could compensate for. Someone else developed a CF X-brace but it too failed for similar reasons. I would think, for this project to be a success, eliminating weight in the wrong places and using materials with similar expansion and contraction characteristics would be paramount to success.

[Eire]

Originally Posted by Tim McKnight

In your OP you left out the materials that you are considering. My initial responses are based on using common woods used to build guitars today. This is a challenging thought which I am sure could be accomplished to varying degrees of success. However, many stumbling blocks will be hurdles to overcome....

Ask a question, and get a technical and thought-provoking response from an engineer who happens to be a luthier (or is that a luthier who happened to be an engineer?).

There's a sound reason Mr. Hatcher's offer contains the "no lifetime warranty" and no "two-day approval" clause, I'd suggest.

[nacluth]

I too think most joining problems could be overcome - whether the end result is a salable guitar may by another question. Well placed magnets have been used by several luthiers for a while for non load bearing parts. Seams could be covered by thin plates and tacked on. You could even use fabric to stitch on certain elements if needed. A couple of well placed slots on the top and sides would allow you to tie down the top to the rim.

Nothing particularly seems insurmountable, though the high tension joints like the bridge might need to be slightly overbuilt to allow for a more substantial mechanical hold. It's hard to beat the mechanical advantage of .001 worth of strong glue.

[Liljeström]

Interesting idea. I think thre is answer if you dwell deep into japanese joinery techniques. They have made houses that require no glue or fasteners for centuries.

Hope you find time to do this, I'd love to see what you come up with!


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[FrankHudson]

Know nothing of luthiere, but love thought experiments, so here goes.

I'd build (as if I had those skills!) a one piece "neck through" spine out of hardwood. The portion that runs through the body would be carved, cutaway so that the traditional acoustic chamber is retained. You don't want the fretboard to be integral to the neck, but I see no reason not to simplify there.

Tuners would be classical tapered press fit. How practical? I sort of made that work once on a mountain dulcimer.

A tailpiece would be integral to the neck through. Bridge would float on the top.

Top (we're going to use wood, because I think you imply that, but other materials would make this challenge much easier) carved with latticework-like bracing into the bottom of the top. It'll be hard to figure out how to do this to best effect as there's no generations of practice to build on. You rule out an archtop, but maybe that's a bad rule? I don't know, but let's go flat top for now. If it causes an issue, do away with the traditional large round soundhole though and use smaller, multiple soundholes or a side port.

The top probably semi-floats. It rests the grooves or ridges on the top of the sides.

How tight does the top need to be affixed to the body? I don't know. Pressure on the floating bridge from the strings would keep it from falling off while being played. Some kind of press fit cleating system of some kind?

Back and sides: a bowl. You're going to have to go with a large piece of wood and/or a small body likely. How much bowl shaped could be a determined by taste or experiments, but if you want it look as traditional as possible only a slight arch (like the back of Guild jumbo) may be necessary for structural reasons.

Frets? Nut? already press fit. Truss rod, also not glued.