How a guitar is made

Wowzers, that's a lot of skill and work.  But there is something sooooo satisfying watching master craftsmanship.

I built a guitar, and wrote a long essay about it. I should publish it somewhere and post a link. I'll do that.

Just watched an episode of "How things work" presented by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki  and available to watch via  - iview.abc.net.au  Australia's ABC TV.  it's how acoustic guitars are made in a factory - all the processes are similar to artisan methods, just more mechanised, but still with that personal attention to the fine details.
The timbers used are absolutely stunning!

A more chaotic build, and not quite a guitar.



But it does show how accessible making string instruments can be to the rest of us.

And now, the ukulele



More production line style of making, but interesting how much is done by hand.

This is for the baglamas, the little mandolin-like instrument from Greece. I think it is such a wonderful sounding instrument!

My baglamas is made differently--the bowl is not made of a single block of wood but out of wood that is split and bent like an oud, or a bowl back mandolin. The headstock is also originally separate from the neck, like in the guitar.

With my little experience in lutherie, I would think to try it not by creating the whole instrument out of a single block of wood, but by creating the bowl (either via carving or bent wood), sharpening the neck to a spike and having the spike go through the bowl as in a banjo. (But--would this be strong enough for the six steel strings? I also had an idea for a different sort of headstock today that would be interesting to experiment with--to have the strings wrap on the bottom, and then thread through to the top. I already have a homemade instrument that I might be able to convert this way.

What an extremely fun ukulele build for Halloween or maybe day of the dead.

In a bit more detail:

Ned Harr wrote:I built a guitar, and wrote a long essay about it. I should publish it somewhere and post a link. I'll do that.

Can't remember if I ever posted it here, but here it is: https://nadaav.substack.com/p/gittorr

If you want to skip down to the pictures of the guitar I made, they're about 2/3 of the way down the page.

This made me rethink instrument making… in this short documentary they go through the steps of making an Indian tanpura with a gourd.

 

To clarify on what precisely struck me about their process— I think it was the way they carved the sound board. In western instruments—plucked ones that is—the sound board is typically not rounded. In the violin family—and some guitars—they are not flat boards but slightly arched. It seems liberating because of how daunting it is to make a perfectly thin flat board with only hand tools. But when the irregularity is embraced this way, it can create something very beautiful and functional too. The flat boards are just easy for machines to make, not so for human hands!

Guqin is also like this—the bottom is more flattened but the top is actually arched to form almost a tube.

I am making a zither from a split dead-harvested willow branch similar to the guqin—it is going well! Tonight I was carving out the details and testing it and it sounds lovely. It even seemed to sing spontaneously as I was holding and scraping it. The sound of a dead elm from nearby also sounds quite promising.

Another thing I am researching is erhus—I think I have a piece of gourd perfectly shaped to make one.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1510954740150689&vanity=61550774600863