Steel Guitar Builder

So here's my first build. I'm going to do a semi-hollow body.. not that I thik it will make a huge differance in sound being such a small body, more so just because I wanted to base it a bit off my Gibson 339.. and I guess I like a challange I've had 2 pretty solid days to work on it so far so I feel like it's came along ok so far. I'm just waiting for a my garage to warm up a bit here now so I can get a 3rd day in.

First day:

A couple scribbles of my idea.



The stock, some nice maple I've had kicking around for a while


Book matched the top


The sides


Neck layed out










Top and neck, done for the day

Here's day 2.

A small steamer I built for the sides




Side forms




rough cut the top




A rosewood board I had that I didnt reeeeally didnt want to cut up


but.. it made a nice fret board

Some of those pictures got mixed up, that rosewood board ended up a few pictures up.

NICE! And some good "ol'time" techniques going on. I like it!

Thanks! Yea we can acquire all the power tools we want but nothing feels better than getting your hands dirty once in a while. That's the first time I used a scraper, I could have done that all day!

Funny thing, yesterday I had looked everything over, was super excited to just be out working in the garage,.. I had the neck almost done, yup, sides scraped and ready to steam,. Top was cut to shape, check. OH! Well in all the excitement I had forgot to make the BACK!! Duh Haha so I did that before I shut'r down for the night.

I got a little bit more done yesterday





Body knotched and set into place, starting to look like something

I read in another post somewhere that double sided carpet tape was used for sticking on an edge to router by, that's what I did for the neck sides, taped a straight piece of mdf to the neck to run the bearing on and it worked great.

Mark, A lot of painstaking work and love is going into that guitar. It will be a success for sure! Good luck with your already fine product!
PS I wish I could draw like that. It would make life so much easier....

Thanks Bent! Here's some pictures from today. I hope I'm not making myself look like a dummy here posting so many photos, maybe I'm putting too many. I just like seeing a lot of the process on people projects,. Anyway here's how today went.

After the sides steamed for a while (not actually long enough I don't think) I used a pipe and torch to make the bends close to the mold.




Then clamped them in the moulds



I don't know what these are called,, but they go around inside the sides. Y'know



Hollowing out the inside. I started by using a small hand plane that I reshaped the blade on but it was snagging way to much on the curly so I switched to a dremel.


Then got the F holes cut at my friends on his scroll saw. They're the opposite way as you'd usually see them,. But I drew a couple and thought they fitted the body's profile nicer like this.

You are doing great and I really like the step by step photos you are posting of your build. By all means keep them coming. I've made a few lap steels in the past and I have another started, but different things have gotten in the way and taken priority over this build. I hope to get back to it soon.
LaVern