I went all in, buying almost 400 lbs. of defective guitar necks to turn into coat racks.  Selling them at $30 each at fall festivals in September and October.  I can officially say I'm getting tired of making coat racks out of guitar necks, but they sure look cool and I'm excited to see how many I can sell.  I love having something in my booth that you don't have to be a musician to appreciate.  Just a music lover.  Give me a holler if this looks like something you would want hanging on your…

After a few varied builds - lunchbox, Christmas tin and even a few cigar boxes, I decided to build my 'player'. Truth is I kind of felt like these builds were all experiments and it was time to get serious-ish.

Enter Jaime Garcia. This 'My Father Cigar' box is beautiful, simple and well constructed. Thin top and bottom. Although they are plywood, the tap tone…

I have always used oak for my necks, and at first I was always frustrated that no matter how well I sanded the wood, the oak's open pores meant that the finish was never completely smooth. After a bit of research I came across grain filler, and ordered a tin of Rustins.

Grain filler is different from wood…

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So up until this point, we have the basic shape of the neck, and the fretboard is as good as done. This would be a good time to level, crown and polish the frets, if you wish. I wrote a 'how to' on that…

Part 1

OK - so we're ready to start shaping the headstock. The first job is to mask off the wood, then draw the design. I've also measured and marked out where I want the tuners to be.…

I don't claim to have invented this design, but here's how I make a robust neck through with a heel, leaving plenty of space under the lid for pickups/bracing etc. There are plenty of ways to go about this, and no right or wrong way. However this design helped me overcome a number of obstacles in my early builds. I will skip over quite a few basic aspects of CBG building so it might be an idea to have a grasp of scale lengths etc.…

    This is a cool one i built for a friend who is a well respected melodian musician here in Vancouver. His name is John Krieger. He wanted me to tweak it a bit and put a double octave string for the high strings and have a strum stick fretting on it. It turned out nice and sounded really beautiful. I used a nice Punch box i found in San Diego on a business trip and piece of…