Need advice on dowel/broom handle necks

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Permalink Reply by Paul Thorley on November 28, 2009 at 10:15pm

I use oak, redgum and jarrah dowels and find that one dowell will hold 3 strings okay. I bolt them together and treat them like one piece of wood as I do the fret markers etc. I leave them bolted together at the headstock end and attach them to the box lid seperately.

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Permalink Reply by Tres Seaver on November 28, 2009 at 10:35pm

Gene said:

http://www.bellforestproducts.com/wood-dowels-1/

Thanks for the link to what looks to be an awesome vendor: I've been having a hard time finding any "small lots" exotics, which is exactly what those guys seem to specialize in.

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Permalink Reply by Jerryrig240 on December 2, 2009 at 6:10am

It helps to find a nice long tuning peg. Or, cut notches in the broom handles for a tuning peg. On my wd40 oil can guitar, I used what I had here at home....two broken broom handles. They do not go all the way through, they bolt on to a seperate peice of wood in my weird creation. The nice smooth surface of a broom handle sounds pretty good, that is, for a broom handle. I am thinking of making my next cbg into a broom handle guitar, we shall see. I think I will make it lowbow style with the handles going all the way through, 4 string......yeah....that sounds good. To keep things together,you can do what did and screw the dowles/handles together at the bottom, then I added a hose clamp at the top and super glued a nut below the hose clamp. Makes for a interesting look. The awesome thing about thse cbg's are they are so dang easey to make. You don't have to be a super wood craftsman to slap some broom handles into a box and make a rockin' guitar. And they sound really well cuz' most of the broom handles you find, espically old ones are made of some super strong wood.....not cheap pine.

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