There are many places to find some great help. Cumpiano's book and website are a wealth of knowledge to start with. John Hall at Bluescreek is another great source for kits, materials and some of the specialty tools. Kit or no kit? A kit guitar will cost you more than individual items if you buy them separately, but with kits some of the work is finished for you so that you can work on other skills necessary to complete your first guitar without ruining that first neck blank, top etc etc. Here are a couple websites that I use regularly and all of them have other links you will want to look over. Good luck and hope to see your progress
http://www.bluescreekguitars.com/
http://luthiersforum.com/forum/index.php
http://kitguitarforum.com/
http://www.frets.com/
http://13thfret.com/
http://luthierforum.com/