A little history.......

DAY 1

I am starting this blog to document the building of my second guitar, an LMI kit OM. This kit will have highly figured bearclaw sitka spruce for the top, granadillo for the sides and back, ebony for the fingerboard, curly maple bindings, and an Indian rosewood bridge. I am going to try my hand at some inlay work on this one too. It should look nice..... I hope!

I built my first guitar, a dreadnaught kit by Stewart MacDonald starting in September of '06 an finished it in late November. I did not make a photographic record of this build so all I can post are pictures of the finished guitar. The top is spruce, sides and back are mahogany, fingerboard is rosewood, the neck is a mahogany dovetail (not a bolt on), and the tuners are Gotoh 16:1 gold. The finish is waterbased lacquer. I learned a lot building this guitar, it is not perfect by any means, but it sounds great and it is something I made with my own two hands. Actually, I built an electric guitar kit for my daughter last Christmas so really this was my second guitar. But, if any of you have actually built an electric guitar, it really is more of an assembly than a build. I really don't count that as a guitar build rather a guitar sanding, finish, and assembly.

I am not a player, but it didn't take me any time at all to know that this guitar sounded a lot better than the inexpensive acoustic guitars my daughter owns. It just sounds deeper and brighter at the same time. It is hard to explain but it really does sound different in a very good way. I have just started a 'teach yourself guitar' software program so maybe before I am finished with this new guitar, I might actually be able to play a song or two. Who knows.....

Anyways, on to some pictures. Forgive the quality of the photo's. The camera is not a high end camera that a pro would use, but a mid level Kodak digital. Here are the pictures; warts and all!

Headstock is mahogany with rosewood laminate. I curved both sides, the top and cut two corner notches just to make it a little different.

The grain in the mahogany was really nice for a kit. I was very happy with the way it looks. I stained the wood with a bit of mahogany red and brown mixed water based stain.

After what seems like weeks of sanding and polishing, I finally ended up with a finish I could live with. If you look closely, you can read the digital thermometer in the reflection.

Just another view showing the shine.

The top has the same level of gloss, it is just harder to get a picture of it with the top being such a light color. If you look closely, you can see a bit of 'bearclaw' in the top. I was thrilled to get that in a kit.

Here is one of the 'warts' I was talking about. I sanded through the finish on the side and had to make a repair. I spent a lot of time trying to fix this only to sand through it again...twice! Out of frustration, I gave up on trying to make it look perfect and decided it would be added 'character'. :-)

Here is the final product. Not bad for my first try.

My new kit should arrive in the next week, and I will start a photo blog as I start building.