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Old 09-29-2016, 06:22 PM
Neil K Walk Neil K Walk is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Pittsburgh suburbs
Posts: 8,309
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Good luck! As somebody who took 4 years to build his first guitar and four years and not even halfway into his second I can relate on the whole "taking it slow" thing. The drawback is that if you don't maintain a regular pace or let it languish too long you tend to forget what you learned the first time and can make the same mistakes again.

I see that you plan on using curly maple for your first wood. I'd reconsider.
When I embarked on my first I was told to work with an easy wood. Through poring over threads here and on luthiersforum.com and kitguitarsforum.com I heard how difficult it was to bend highly figured woods like curly maple without cracking it because of reasons I still cannot fully understand. In my case I was told to use mahogany for my first build because it was easy to work with - but I still found it somewhat temperamental because after bending the sides it either wanted to spring back to being flat or was so brittle that it would crack along the grain. OTOH I used rosewood for binding on my first and for the back and sides on my second and it bent easily without much effort. It also covers up mistakes very easily. I highly recommend it.

I'd also reconsider bloodwood for the binding. I've heard that unless you seal the spruce with a spit coat of shellac the color will bleed into the lighter adjacent wood. It probably wouldn't hurt to seal the maple too. FWIW rosewood provides a nice contrast to maple and sitka if you would consider an alternative.

Finally, I would recommend purchasing your materials for your neck woods and letting them acclimate to your workshop's environment for several months to a year. The thicker the wood the longer it takes to acclimate. I used 3/4" mahogany stock and 1/8" maple and walnut stock to build laminated necks and let it sit for over a year. Even then, my first attempt ended up curving slightly. Not too much, but enough that I was concerned that even adding a truss rod would help. It became my practice blank for making a tenon.

I'm sorry if this response came across as being negative. I'm just trying to provide some perspective from a not so noob POV. At the end of the build you will feel a measure of fulfillment but what you're really going to gain is experience through making and solving mistakes along with a strong desire to do it again so that you can do better next time.

Not to say that your first build is guaranteed to be bad but - contrary to how many parents feel about their kids - you will be looking at it with a biased sense of seeing every flaw. If you're expecting planning to prevent errors and frustration and giving yourself more time to pay attention to fine details you may find that you're going to be frustrated nonetheless.

I certainly felt that way because I chose to work with a cedar top instead of spruce. Even though cedar smells wonderful while you're working with it and the tone is wonderfully warm and mellow, it is also notorious for picking up scratches and dings despite every precaution I tried. Some experienced builders shy away from the stuff for that very reason.
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(2006) Larrivee OM-03R, (2009) Martin D-16GT, (1998) Fender Am Std Ash Stratocaster, (2013) McKnight McUke, (1989) Kramer Striker ST600, a couple of DIY builds (2013, 2023)
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