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Cigar Box Guitar No. 2

For my second cigar box guitar, I bought a six foot length of 1 x 2 oak from Home Depot. I made sure the piece of lumber was flat and straight. It weighed a lot more than the pine wood I’d used in my first cigar box guitar, and felt a lot better in my hands. I also bought a small metal miter box from a hobby store to cut the fret slots in the neck. This time, I made perfectly straight fret cuts.

I shaved off the part of the neck that attached to the cigar box so that the surface of the fret board was flush with the top of the cigar box, unlike on my first cigar box guitar. Remembering Mister Jalopy’s dictum, “screws not glues,” I screwed the neck to the cigar box with three fasteners. This way, if I need to make changes or later want to swap in a new cigar box, it will be a simple matter to remove the screws.

I made a couple of small mistakes, like drilling a hole in a spot that hit a screw going in a perpendicular direction to the hole, but this guitar build went very smoothly. The action is low, but not so low that it buzzes, and I can play the strings all the way up to the highest fret (the 20th) without interference.

Many thanks to Steve Lodefink and the gang at Cigar Box Nation for the advice on this!

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Location: Studio City, CA

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Comment by Paul Thorley on December 8, 2009 at 3:22am: Nice one, Mark.

Comment by chris ekelman on December 7, 2009 at 7:47pm: looks good.

Comment by Keni Lee Burgess on December 7, 2009 at 10:50am: Looking mighty fine my friend. I wouldn't mind taking her out for a ride around the park. Happy Holidays. Enjoy.

Comment by Miguel Aguiar on December 7, 2009 at 8:57am: congrats, great build!

Comment by Shane Speal on December 7, 2009 at 8:01am: Congrats, Mark...you've got the Featured Instrument of the Day. You're a star!

-Shane Speal

Comment by bairfoot cajun on May 27, 2009 at 11:45pm: hey mark that qualifies as a rat rod cigar box guitar. it looks cool i likes it. bet it sounds good. i always build my guitars so i can take them apart if they need it. great concept yep.