My Journey of Guitar Building

Rosette Layout

This is the rough shape and design of the rosette, which is the ring around the soundhole of the guitar.
Rosette Inlay

Here is the rosette inlayed in the top of the guitar. I have decorative wood bindings on the inside and outside of the ring for a nice finished touch.
Rosette Inlay w/ Top

This is a full top view of the inlay on the roughed top. The top at this point has been hand planed and sanded to a specific thickness.
Rough Top Shape

Another top view of the top of the guitar with it in the rough shape of the body. This is a jumbo style guitar, so it is more curvy than a traditional dreadnaught style.
Bracing Pattern

This is the underside of the top with pencil lines for the bracing. The braces help support the top from being pulled apart from the tension of the strings and vibrations.
Bracing Pattern

This is a full shot of the underside of the guitar. The piece of wood glued to the underside is persimmon, which is very tough and is used to protect the top from the ball ends of the strings. It is at this point where the strings meet the body of the guitar, which is especially susceptible to damage.
X-Bracing

This is the unglued lower X-brace, which is typically not used in guitars. The luthier that I studied with found that the double x-braces produced a tone that most players really loved.
Gluing the Braces

The process of gluing the braces on requires a form with a 25' radius, which is underneath and wooden dowels to hold them in place. The dowels are individually weak, but collectively strong enough to provide enough force for the hide glue.
Final Gluing

As you can see, there are many dowels on the braces and these must be put on quickly because hide glue adheres very quickly. This is left overnight to cure and the dowels are removed in the morning.
Brace Carving

Once the braces are glued, they must be carved down to reduce the weight. This is a tricky part because they must be light enough to not add too much weight but strong enough to protect the top from the forces exerted by the strings.
Final Brace Carvings

This is the finished size of the braces and as you can see, a lot of material has been taken of the braces. This part took a while because I was tuning the plate to a certain frequency and adjusting the braces as I went.
Back Gluing

This is the process of joining of the back. Two pieces of black walnut are bookmatched and hand planed to create a tight seam. The strip in the middle is flamed maple which will provide a nice accent to the black walnut back and sides.
Sanded Back

This is the back in it's rough shape, which has been hand planed to a specific thickness and sanded down for finishing. As you can see, the black walnut has some nice figure to it which will look even better once it has finish on it.
Back Bracing

This is the bracing for the back of the guitar, which went through the same gluing process but with a 30' radius instead. A piece of decorative walnut has been glued to cover the seams since it will be showing through the soundhole.
Side molding

The sides have been previously bent into a rough shape and they will take their final form in this mold. The hardware in the middle does it's part to maintain pressure on the wood so it forms exactly to the mold.
Sides w/ Kerfing

The sides now have been shaped into the mold and the kerfing has been added, which allows the top and back to be joined to the sides. Tape has also been glued in short sections to prevent cracks from traversing down the entire side of the guitar.
Neck Block

This is the block that is used to connect the neck to the body of the guitar. It will be shaved down to meet up exactly with the top and back and carved into a modified dovetail joint.
Back/Side Gluing

The process of gluing the back to the sides requires lots of small clamps so the glue adheres to the kerfing and the back. The sides have been shaped to fit the exact radius of the back, which was quite a process.
Guitar Body

The top and back have been glued to the sides and finally we have something that looks more like a guitar. This is called the soundbox because it is basically a speaker box that transmits sound.
Guitar Body

This is the back side of the guitar which has decorative flamed maple binding around the edges to match the center strip. There is also a decorative piece of flamed maple that has been added to lower bout of sides the guitar.
Guitar Neck

This is the neck of the guitar, which is made of one solid piece of black walnut to match the sides and back. By using one piece of wood for the neck, it provides a much more stability than necks that have two and three pieces.
Headstock

This is the custom headstock design that I came up with with the holes already drilled for the tuning pegs. It's nothing too fancy, but I liked the lines it creates on the top of the instrument.
Headstock Inlay

This is the custom inlay that I did on the headstock, which is my Scottish family crest. Feros Ferios translates to 'I am fierce with the fierce'. The image of the boars head represents the story that two Chisholm brothers saved a king from a wild boar.
Rough Guitar

Now it's really looking like a guitar. The neck is fit to the body and the rough guitar is beginning to take shape. You can see the master luthier in the background gluing down some bracings to a guitar.
Back/Neck Varnish

The back and neck are now finished with three layers of rock hard table varnish for a nice sheen that will provide protection from belts and all that will ding up the finish.
Finished Guitar

I obviously missed a few pictures from the fretting and gluing the bridge down, but oh well. The top was finished with french polish, which is a softer finish but allows sound to permeate through the top very easily.
Finished Product

And here is the culmination of two years of hard work and lots of patience. Although my patience was rather thin at certain points in the journey, I am very happy with the finished product. I play this guitar almost every day.