Lessons Learned on First Guitar Build

Here are a few of the lessons I learned while building the first guitar.

• If you soak the wood for about an hour before bending, it's easier to bend and there's less scorching.
• The sides should be about .09" thick.  1/8" (.128") was too thick.
• Start with a piece that's longer than you really need so that there's some excess at each end.  This will make it easier to bend the curves at the end, especially on the upper bout.  I had problems getting the ends of the upper bout to bend. As a result, they didn't come together smoothly and the neck joint has a big gap between the neck and the body.
• Do not mark and cut the ends until you've put them into the form.  Clamping into the form will stretch them some more.
• Let the sides set in the form for several days.  If you don't, the wood will relax and lose some of its bend as it cools (and dries if you soaked it).
• Make a small form of just the inside of the waist.  This can be used while bending the waist so that you don't have to keep moving back and forth to the full form.  It might also keep me from applying too much pressure and cracking the side.
• Insert the frets before gluing the fretboard onto the body.  It would be a lot easier to clean up the ends with a file without having to worry about the finish.  I especially had problems where the fretboard was over the body because I couldn't get the cutters in deep enough to cut well.
• I could use a better saw for cutting fret slots.  Although a good saw is about $20 to $30, and LMI will slot a fretboard for you for $9 (at the time of this article), so if I'm ordering the wood from them anyway, it would be cheaper to do it that way.
• Apply the finish before installing the fretboard.  Be sure to mask the area where the fretboard will go.  I did this for the bridge and wished I'd done it for the fretboard too.
• When masking the area for the bridge and fretboard, allow the finish to overlap into the area where they'll be glued by about 1mm.  This will help hide any imperfections of the edge left when removing the tape.
• On the first guitar, I extended the fretboard over the sound hole and then cut it to match the radius of the opening.  This leaves the ends pointy and, unless perfectly centered, they come out uneven.  On the next one, I think I want to make the end either square (tangent to the opening) or convex.
• Speaking of "perfectly centered", I need a better way to position the top and sides while gluing.  I had marked the outline on the outside of the top and cut it slightly big  (you can always sand extra off -- you can't put extra back on).  However, this meant that I couldn't see the lines at all on the inside, which is what is visible when gluing. As a result, the sound hole is slightly off-center.  Just marking the centerline on the back of the top might help.
• Finishing requires lots of patience. The French polishing technique is relatively easy (search YouTube) and produces good results.  However, once you've finished one side, let the guitar set for several days for the shellac to harden.  I ended up transferring the texture of the rubber mat that I had on the workbench to protect the finish onto the back of the guitar and had to sand it out and refinish it.
• Measure twice, cut once.  I had intended to place the 12th fret where the neck meets the body, but counted wrong and that was the 13th fret. As a result of this mistake, I had to move the bridge up so that it's not over the reinforcing piece on the inside.