Thinking outside the box

Hi,
These last few years I have been asked to build quite a few cigar box instruments for people. Must have been about 20 by now and they were all box shaped as you may have guessed. This time the request was for an electric tenor guitar. My first thought was to get a kit guitar and just put 4 strings on it but when I did a measure up and a sketch the too wide neck and 6 string pickups would look a bit out of proportion. Besides it would look too much like something off the music shop shelf. Anyhow I decided to have a go at a semi hollow body. Any real luthiers out there may like to now go and mow the lawn or something. I will understand.
Had a look at a few utube things and figured it is a bit like a bandsawn box so what possibly can go wrong. Some pics of progress so far.
Regards
John

Looks great John! One of my daughters come up with a hollow body design, fortunately she decided she liked the ukulele I made for her twin sister and has decided on one the same. I now have an Alder body that I need to do something with one day. Keep us posted on the progress!

Looking good! Love the F hole.

I think your method is great, we all know real luthiers would use CNC.....

Thanks for the encouragement guys. There are a few things in this build I have not done before apart from the shape not being a box. First time using magneric pickup and the one I was fretting about the truss rod. Anyhow learning a lot along the way. Working on the neck at the moment and when that is done I can set up to rout the neck pocket as I am not working from templates. I did make a template of the body shape however so in future I can knock out others if needed.
There will be more picks as things progress.
Regards
John

Thank you for the photos. Every bit of information helps me.

Pete

Hi,
I got the neck just about done so will soon be fitting everything together.
Regards
John

I got the neck pocket routed and test fitted the neck. Being my first go at this I managed to get a sloppy fit so was forced to add a 1mm shim to get a good tight fit. Other thing I did not have was 14mm bit that would do a flat bottomed countersink for the cup washers. The only 14mm bit at my local green shed was a spade bit. Not ideal but being new and sharp I had a trial on some scrap and it worked out fine. So with the construction about over it's now time for sanding and danish oil. Aim for about 6 coats or so.
Regards
John

Looks great John!

Thank you for putting that up. And yes, we are all paying attention even if, sometimes we unfortunately don't acknowledge it.

Pete

Well got it finished at last. Way too hot in the shed so was forced to use the dining table for the final tweeking.
Tuned cgda so all I can do on it is play the dots but it sounds pretty nice. It has been a learning curve for sure but glad I went out of my comfort zone.
Regards
John

Fantastic John! It looks wonderful, lovely shape with nice clean lines. Will you do a sound clip or video so we can hear how it sounds?

Cant play it with that tuning but perhaps may get the new owner on camera at one of our pub gigs.
Regards
John

Very cool, a lovely instrument - I play a tenor guitar (among a collection of guitars) and they sound fantastic when played as a counterpoint to other players. I play mine tuned as a mandola - cgda but they also sound good tuned as a baritone ukulele.