OBSESSED WITH CIGAR BOX

GUITARS

2ND EDITION

Obsessed with Cigar Box Guitars, 2nd Edition

CompanionHouse Books™ is an imprint of Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd.

Project Team

Vice President–Content: Christopher Reggio

Editor: Anthony Regolino

Design: David Fisk

Index: Johanna Egert

All photos © David B. Sutton unless otherwise noted.

Shutterstock photo sources: page 3 (background), sarayut jun-ngam; page 160, beeboys; page 163, photobeps.

Obsessed with Cigar Box Guitars, 2nd Edition (2019) is a revised edition of An Obsession with Cigar Box Guitars (2013), published by Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc. New edition includes a section devoted to ukuleles, filled with photographs.

Copyright © 2013, 2019 by David Sutton and Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Fox Chapel Publishers, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

ISBN 978-1-62008-313-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sutton, David, 1958- author.

Title: Obsessed with cigar box guitars / David Sutton.

Other titles: Obsession with cigar box guitars

Description: 2nd edition. | Mount Joy, PA : CompanionHouse, 2019. | Revision of the author’s An obsession with cigar box guitars. | Includes index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018053588 (print) | LCCN 2018054437 (ebook) | ISBN 9781620083147 (ebook) | ISBN 9781620083130 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Cigar box guitar--Pictorial works.

Classification: LCC ML1015.G9 (ebook) | LCC ML1015.G9 S887 2019 (print) | DDC 787.87/1920222--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018053588

This book has been published with the intent to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter within. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the author and publisher expressly disclaim any responsibility for any errors, omissions, or adverse effects arising from the use or application of the information contained herein.

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OBSESSED WITH CIGAR BOX

GUITARS

OVER 120 HAND-BUILT GUITARS FROM THE MASTERS

2ND EDITION

DAVID SUTTON

“Perhaps we’re so consumed by our consumer culture that we tend to think of guitars as impossibly complex devices that somebody else has to build. One of the many beauties of the cigar box guitar is that it shatters this myth.”

INTRODUCTION

When I tell people about my previous book, Cigar Box Guitars, the conversation often goes like this:

“I wrote a book called Cigar Box Guitars.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about (dramatic pause) cigar box guitars.”

“What’s a cigar box guitar?”

“It’s a guitar. Made from…
a cigar box. You make it yourself.”

Puzzled stare.
“How many strings does a cigar box guitar have?”

“It depends on how many you put on it.”

Again, the puzzled stare.
“Really now. What is a cigar box guitar?”

A cigar box guitar is a simple stringed instrument that you build yourself, usually by poking a dowel, board, or stick through a discarded wooden cigar box and then outfitting it with guitar strings. For a lot of builders and enthusiasts, the cigar box guitar then becomes a point of departure to begin making music.

Even at this stage, some people still give me that puzzled look. Perhaps we’re so consumed by our consumer culture that we tend to think of guitars as impossibly complex devices that somebody else has to build. One of the many beauties of the cigar box guitar is that it shatters this myth.

You see, while stringed instruments are bound by certain laws of physics, the golden rule of cigar box guitar building is that there are no rules. There’s no right way, no master plan, no industry standard for the design. Each instrument is its own unique answer to the question: What is a cigar box guitar?

Let’s take a look at the physical heart of the matter for another possible answer.

It’s likely it all started with a taut cord.

Perhaps, as some writers have suggested, that cord was part of an archer’s bow. Some musically attuned hunter or warrior must have liked the sound made by that bowstring when it caused the air around it to vibrate. He may have noticed how the pitch changed with the tension of the string.

I imagine some off-duty archer noodling out a tune on his bowstring while bracing one end of the bow against a log or a board. The vibrations transferred to the wood produced a louder sound. Now imagine that the bow was braced against a hollow log. Suddenly the sound was quite a bit louder, amplified and focused by the vibrations of the air inside the hollow log.

This simple yet playable modern-day diddley bow by an unknown builder is made from barn wood, a whiskey bottle, and a ceramic insulator.

From a physical standpoint, that’s really all there is to a cigar box guitar: a taut, vibrating cord (usually a steel guitar string); a vibrating wooden surface over a hollow, resonating chamber (usually a wooden cigar box); and a point of contact between the string and the wood (called the bridge).

Let’s leave our imaginary archer now and fast-forward to the United States of America, late in the nineteenth century.

In many parts of the country, people didn’t have much. The idea of dropping $3,700 (£2909) at Guitar Works on a Collings or a Taylor belonged to the distant, unimaginable future.

But people still made music. It’s like they needed to make music, and we humans are a resourceful lot.

In a world without manufactured guitars, a person could hammer two nails into a board and stretch a strand of wire pulled from a screen door tightly between the nails. Ramming a block of wood under one end would give the wire still more tension.

Plucking that wire or striking it with a stick would cause the wire to vibrate. As the wire vibrated, it would cause the air around it to vibrate, and a sweet, simple tone would resonate. Moving an empty bottle or a piece of pipe along the string while plucking would change the length of the vibrating section of wire. That, in turn, would change the wavelength of the airborne vibrations, which would vary the pitch of that tone. Adding in a little rhythm would be enough to get people singing and dancing.

Ethnomusicologists define this primitive, one-stringed instrument as a monochord zither. Colloquially, it’s more often called a diddley bow.

The diddley bow’s drawback is its limited volume. The volume can be pumped up a bit by wedging a jar or can under the string to act as a resonating chamber, but that, too, has limits. Fortunately for our mid-nineteenth century musicians, help was on the way.

While the details of its history may be a bit sketchy—objects this humble don’t get much play in the history books—we have enough information to speculate about the cigar box guitar’s origins.

In the early nineteenth century, cigars were shipped in barrels or bundled in smaller quantities in pig bladders. The mid-nineteenth century saw the introduction of the cedar cigar box, tailor-made to hold twenty-five cigars in three rows—eight in the bottom row, nine in the middle row, and eight again on top.

An etching titled Home, sweet home by Edwin Forbes, circa 1876, shows a winter camp scene during the Civil War and is cited as the earliest documentation of cigar box instruments.

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

In order to help fund the Civil War, President Lincoln’s congress began taxing a broad range of consumer goods, including cigars. Tax stamps were issued for fixed quantities of cigars, and the cedar 8/9/8 box, sealed with a U.S. tax stamp, rapidly became, and remains, the industry standard for packaging cigars.

Cedar keeps cigars fresh. As luck would have it, cedar also makes an excellent tone wood. In fact, it’s sometimes used in fine guitar building. It didn’t take long before someone figured out that those little boxes, emptied of cigars, made ideal resonating chambers to amplify vibrating strings. Cigar boxes were soon pressed into service by resourceful instrument builders.

With the addition of a string or two, and sometimes a horsehair bow, builders could have a playable guitar or fiddle. Indeed, the earliest definitive reference we have of a cigar box instrument is a print of a Civil War soldier drawing a bow across a cigar box fiddle.

Americans built and played cigar box guitars and fiddles throughout the first half of the twentieth century. They remained common right up through World War II. In fact, in some of earlier Peanuts comic strips from the ’50s, Charlie Brown played a cigar box guitar. Throughout this book are Vintage Spotlights on preserved antique builds from decades—even centuries—ago. Because of the cigar box guitar’s humble origins, most builders of these instruments remain unknown.

Despite their popularity, however, as we moved toward the ’60s, cigar box guitars all but disappeared from the scene.

What happened to cigar box guitars?

After World War II, American culture took a dramatic shift toward consumerism and, specifically, the mass consumption of manufactured goods. We entered an era where Americans began looking down their noses at the humble and the homemade. Guitars became something people bought from Sears or Montgomery Ward.

But if cigar box guitars had disappeared altogether, you would not be holding this book. Something stimulated a twenty-first century revival of this nearly extinct bit of populist culture. What happened?

This might be a good time to talk about my own introduction to cigar box guitars and to look at how I became the chief propaganda minister of this musical revolution.

Moses Williams plays the diddley bow for a group of boys in Waverly, Florida, sometime before 1982.

State Archi ves of Flori da, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/115533, Peggy A. Bulger

In 2006, when she was about five years old, my daughter began taking an interest in my guitars. I wanted her to have a guitar of her own. My father had told me about cigar box guitars when I was a kid, but I didn’t have much more to go on other than this vague concept. I began poking around the Internet to see if I could find some ideas.

My search engines turned up perhaps two modest references to cigar box guitars. I had imagined something made from a cardboard box and rubber bands, but instead I found instructions for building playable guitars capable of making real music.

Using wooden cigar boxes, pieces of 1" x 2" (2.5 x 5cm) maple salvaged from a neighbor’s rehab project, used guitar tuners, bolts, guitar strings, and some glue, I built my daughter and myself a pair of three-string guitars. They made a surprisingly pleasing sound, and building them was a lot of fun.

I built another cigar box guitar after that, and then another, trying slightly different approaches with each build to solve problems I’d encountered in the construction of my previous builds. After five guitars, I set building aside for a while.

Several years later, browsing through a book called The Little Book of Whittling, I noticed a brief message on the copyright page: something like, if you have an idea for a woodworking book, we want to hear about it.

I sent Fox Chapel Publishing an email with pictures of the guitars I’d built, along with some samples of my writing. My timing was fortuitous. Several conversations later, my idea for a modest how-to pamphlet had grown into a concept for a hundred-page book that would contain not only three illustrated how-to-build sections, but also a photo gallery of cigar box instruments and profiles of people who build and play cigar box guitars.

I soon discovered that a lot of other people had become curious about cigar box guitars during the years since I had first looked into the subject. By 2010, a huge, vibrant, international cigar box guitar community had blossomed. Thousands of builders were now busy not just building guitars, but also interacting across websites, blogs, social networking sites, eBay, YouTube, and at festivals around the country.

The materials I gathered for our hundred-page book about this humble, homemade musical instrument ultimately filled more than two hundred pages—and now a second book!

What happened to create this explosion of interest in a primitive musical instrument that had been on the brink of extinction? Call it synchronicity—a confluence of characters and conditions.

It does not surprise me that this sudden explosion of interest in homemade fun coincided with the implosion of the U.S. economy in 2008. Perhaps a lot of people who had been buying or thinking about buying expensive, boutique-built guitars suddenly found themselves without the resources to do so. Their priorities shifted. With so many Americans in the same financial boat, the idea of banging on something humble and homemade became less shameful. It took on a different air.

A huge population of dream-deferring baby boomers, who’d grown up knowing they were born to rock, found themselves with empty nests, a little bit of time on their hands, and fifty- to sixty-year-old faces looking back at them from their bathroom mirrors saying, “Now or never.” This latent revolution just needed a catalyst, and it soon got one.

Just a few years before the economic downturn, a man named Shane Speal had embraced the cigar box guitar with a truly religious fervor. Speal began laying the groundwork for a musical revolution with missionary zeal.

From the age of eight, Speal had played guitar. When he finished high school, he decided that he wanted to be a minister, so he enrolled in a bible college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He says he was “big into Christian rock” at the time, but soon found that style of music a little “too plastic” for his taste.

My obsession with cigar box guitars began as I built two: one for me and one for my daughter.

After a year, he transferred to Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and it was there that he discovered the blues. Speal says after discovering Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, he wanted to know who had influenced them. “You take one step back and you get Muddy Waters and Hound Dog Taylor. Who influenced them? You take one step back and you get Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson.” Nothing if not thorough, Speal then wanted to know who had influenced those guys—the very earliest blues men. What was that “one step deeper than the delta blues”? He couldn’t find any leads. Their predecessors predated recorded music.

Then Shane Speal discovered the cigar box guitar.

I spoke with Speal in 2010 about his discovery and about his unusual passion for this humble instrument:

SPEAL:

A friend of mine gave me a bunch of his dad’s old Guitar Player magazines. There was an article from 1976. It was how to build [a cigar box guitar] based on a Carl Perkins interview with Guitar Player. Carl Perkins started out on a two-string cigar box guitar. Some guy made a really crude version of it and published it in Guitar Player magazine. I went nuts.

SUTTON:

A minute ago you said you had thought you wanted to be a preacher. Now you’re preaching the cigar box guitar gospel. How did that come about?

SPEAL:

I am. I know it sounds absurd for me to say, but I was at one point at a very low point in my life, and I was just praying my guts out, and honest—I am not [kidding] at all—I was praying and I felt, show the world the cigar box guitar. This was in 2002 or 2003. That’s what I felt my calling was. Why? It made no sense to me. I had been playing other homemade instruments. I made a Dobro out of a mailbox and a few other things, but I just felt this calling: “Show the world the cigar box guitar.”

IMAGES OF INGENUITY

Modern-day builders find inspiration in all sorts of places when crafting their unique cigar box guitars. Here are just a few examples.

Music will be made. This “canjo,” built by Glenn Kaiser, uses a tin bean can as a resonating chamber.

This guitar by Paul “Uncle Pauly” Bessette uses a rusty old can lid as a resonator, an iron retaining ring as a biscuit, a rusted bolt as a bridge, and a spoon as an ornamental string anchor.

Builder Al Hamilton of Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania, made one guitar so that it could be opened up and used to carry items—such as makeup, shown here.

Lloyd “MadMan” Madansky of Arroyo Grande, California, built this crutch six-string cigar box guitar (from the collection of Shane Speal).

Shane Speal crowned himself the “self-proclaimed king of the cigar box guitar” and began his ministry on the Internet. He built a one-page website on Geocities explaining, in simple terms, how to build a cigar box guitar. He put the plans up for free.

His timing could not have been more perfect. Just a few years later, the economy tanked and a lot of those born-to-rock baby boomers were no longer able to buy hand-built Martins and Taylors to enjoy in their retirement. Time was running short on getting their blues/rock grooves on. They began to improvise.

Propelled by this groundswell of interest in homemade instruments, and in cigar box guitars in particular, Speal’s Geocities page quickly evolved into a Yahoo! group that then evolved into a social-networking site called Cigar Box Nation.

By April 2013, Cigar Box Nation boasted 10,000 members from all around the world. In ten short years, Speal’s ministry, which started with a website and “a couple of pieces of shop equipment between the washer and dryer,” had reached the stars. Rock legend Sir Paul McCartney played a cigar box guitar with members of Nirvana at a benefit concert in December of 2012, and again later that week on Saturday Night Live. As of this writing, Cigar Box Nation’s membership has reached 20,000 members.

So, what is a cigar box guitar? With any community of this size, you’ll have more than a few opinions on the subject. Some will argue that if it has frets, it’s not a cigar box guitar, while others rail against amplification. Still others may speak with disdain about the six-string, solid-body in a cigar box wrapper.

Generally, though, cigar box guitar people are a friendly bunch who’ll help you find your own answers. And when you start asking questions, you’ll soon become addicted, too. Whether you decide to build, collect, or just admire these slices of history and ingenuity, you’ll soon be just as addicted as the rest of us. Our obsession will become yours—and that’s a good thing.

With that, I’d like to extend my thanks to this busy, diverse community for extending themselves to me and making it possible for me to assemble this collection of photos. Some of these photos were taken while I was making Cigar Box Guitars, and many others have been taken in the years since that book was released.

In photographing the guitars for these books, I have tried to make photos that are as informative as they are attractive. I hope that these photos inspire you, if you haven’t already taken the plunge, to grab a box and join the revolution.

—DAVID SUTTON

Violin maker Peter Seman acquired this antique cigar box violin and restored it in his Skokie, Illinois violin shop. The original maker is unknown. The piece is a true testament to the deep connection between the past and present of cigar box guitars.

BUILD/PLAY/REPEAT!

THE GUITARS

This Red Dog Guitars three-string electric was built by John McNair of Puerto Rico (from the collection of Shane Speal).

John used a double-coil pickup set at an angle to amplify this three-string build.

This Smokehouse Cohiba six-string electric was built by Josh Gayou of Smokehouse Guitars in Southern California. Josh uses three paired sets of strings (from the collection of Shane Speal).

Josh added boost and frequency expansion switches and a volume control knob.

CARL PERKINS

“Before I went to school, I started fooling around on guitar. My daddy made me one with a cigar box, a broomstick, and two strands of baling wire and I’d sit and beat on that thing.”

This ingenious instrument is a thumb piano. Designed by art teacher Diane Sutliff of Chicago, it combines a compact cigar box, an oak dowel, brass wire, and screws.

A detail of Diane’s thumb piano shows the fixtures at the tail end.

This double-neck cigar box bass/ guitar was built by John Lowe of Xanadu Music in Memphis, Tennessee, and is owned by Bill Jehle, frontman of the Alabama-based band Nadaband.

Take a close look at the tuners and nut on this four-string Lowebow. A single piece of composite spans both necks, providing a string nut for both guitar and bass sides.

A detail shows the tail end and string anchors on the double-neck Lowebow. John uses bottle caps to keep the strings from tearing into the wood.

This three-string cigar box guitar by Polk County, Florida, builder Travis “Uncle Crow” Richardson uses board-on-box construction, as opposed to “stick through” construction, and eyebolts with wing nuts as friction tuners. This guitar resides in the lobby of the Holiday Music Motel in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

Travis used eyebolts, nuts, wing nuts, and washers to create tuners for this board-on-box guitar.

An angled cutoff provides an elegantly simple string-anchoring solution.

No cigar box is immune to guitar building! Different builders have different favorites, but the Revolucion cigar box used by this unknown builder shows that you can use the box you have. You can also get a surprising range of music from just two strings. This guitar also uses diatonic fretting. Note that a door strike plate has been implemented to anchor the strings (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

This two-stringer features a small threaded bolt as a string nut and screw eyes for string trees.

I built this three-string acoustic cigar box guitar for Build #1 in my first book, Cigar Box Guitars.

A detail shot shows the headstock for Build #1.

I used a J-bolt to provide the string bridge for Build #1.

This is probably the fourth cigar box guitar I built, and the first that used frets. I also added a piezo pickup so I could play through an amplifier.

I added a carved cherry volume knob to Build #4.

A detail shows the body for Build #4.

A nicely built Fonseca one-string guitar was fashioned from a broom handle and a cigar box by an unknown maker (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

The bent scrap metal that serves as a bridge and saddle gives this guitar a very bright, powerful, and clear tone.

The guitar tuner used on this one-string is held in place with a bent nail.

For this experimental two-string guitar, builder and Handmade Music Clubhouse host (handmademusicclubhouse.com) Ted Crocker used empty beer bottles as resonators and an oak dowel for a neck.

Photo by Ted Crocker

This electric four-string was built by John Terrell of Huntsville, Alabama.

A detail shows the mother-of-pearl inlay work in John’s fingerboard.

Rick Springfield’s fan club commissioned luthier Matty Baratto of North Hollywood, California, to build this four-string acoustic as a gift for the singer. Matty also built the four-string guitar Paul McCartney famously played with members of Nirvana at the Hurricane Sandy benefit concert and later on Saturday Night Live (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

Matty overlaid the headstock with bird’s-eye maple and carved the nut out of ebony.

Ted Crocker built the neck for this four-string electric guitar using paired oak dowels with a board attached to the front as a fretless fretboard. Two four-pole magnetic pickups provide the drive.

Photo by Ted Crocker

He attached carved wood details to the box to enhance its appearance and increase the player’s comfort.

Photo by Ted Crocker

Huntsville, Alabama, cigar box guitar builder and collector Bill Jehle challenged himself to build a guitar out of scraps he had lying around. The result: this six-string fretless guitar built for less than $2 (£1.57) (he says he paid a dollar for the pickup).

Bill fashioned a bridge for his junk guitar out of a comb he found at a gas station.

JIMI HENDRIX

“Eight-year-old James Marshall Hendrix wanted so much to play the guitar to set his poems to music that he used a broom to strum out the rhythms in his head until he crafted a cigar box into his own guitar.” Jimi’s cigar box guitar had rubber bands wrapped around the box, serving as strings.

“Exotic Coconut, Exhilarating Rum, Exciting Taste.” How could this Nukii cookie tin guitar by Diane Sutliff not inspire a party?

Pop-rivet collars reinforce the string anchor holes and keep the strings from biting into the wood.

Shane Speal calls this ultra simple two-string build The Chugger. Look for Shane and his Chugger on YouTube for an amazing demonstration of what kind of music can be drawn out of just two strings.

A close-up photograph of the headstock shows The Chugger’s tuners.

This double-necked bass/guitar hybrid developed by Memphis, Tennessee, instrument builder John Lowe does most of the heavy lifting for the band Purgatory Hill. Lowe dubbed this instrument the Purgatory Hill Harp—and the instrument then lent the band its name.

In the hands of pat mAcdonald the instrument that gave his band a name takes on a life of its own.

This view shows the dual outputs in action. Having one output for the bass and one for the guitar strings allows each signal to be processed independently.

John favors bottle caps to serve as string anchors on his Lowebow creations.

John’s autograph and inscription appear on the back of pat mAcdonald’s Purgatory Hill Harp.

Builder John Lowe ingeniously perches two magnetic pickups in a shared arrangement under the three guitar strings. A third pickup for the bass string is visible at the top edge of the frame. John uses sewing machine bobbins, ultra fine copper wire, and tiny magnets to tailor his pickups for his signature sound.

pat mAcdonald plays in York, Pennsylvania, 2010.

pat performs with his Purgatory Hill Harp in Chicago, 2012.

pat mAcdonald and melaniejane rest up in York, Pennsylvania, after headlining the 2010 Cigar Box Guitar Festival.

pat wears his slide on his pinkie finger.

pat mAcdonald does double duty on stage in York, Pennsylvania, 2010.

Shane Speal built this three-string in 1996 and has used it continuously since, giving it the nickname “Old Faithful.”

A detail shot shows Old Faithful’s headstock.

Shane collects autographs from musicians he’s shared the stage with. Many of them surround the sound hole on this three-string.

Vintage Spotlight

Though he acquired these two one-string guitars from different sources, Bill Jehle calls them “sisters,” because they appear to be built by the same unknown maker. Discovered at two separate auctions, they date to the 1930s and came from upstate New York. Each has a single, mechanical guitar tuner and otherwise all-wood construction.

Slotted headstocks are equipped with geared, mechanical tuning machines.

Paul Bessette of Uncle Pauly’s Boxes in Cockeysville, Maryland, fashioned this three-string resonator from a rusted can lid, and then used an iron retaining ring as a biscuit and a rusted bolt for a bridge. He used stained oak for a fretboard over a red oak neck. A spoon serves as an ornamental string anchor and tailpiece.

A close-up photo shows the resonator/biscuit/bridge assembly.

This La Floridana four-string acoustic/electric by an unknown builder has volume and tone controls for a piezo pickup and uses large grommets to adorn the sound holes (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS

“So I went ahead and made me a guitar. I got me a cigar box, I cut me a round hole in the middle of it, take me a little piece of plank, nailed it onto that cigar box, and I got me some screen wire and I made me a bridge back there and raised it up high enough that it would sound inside that little box, and got me a tune out of it. I kept my tune and I played from then on.”

Al Hamilton of Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania, built this three-string York Imperial acoustic (from the collection of Shane Speal).

Al’s guitar has Indian head pennies embedded in the neck and tailstock.

An Indian head nickel inlay adorns the neck.

Vintage Spotlight

This single-string cigar box guitar or fiddle was built around the turn of the last century. Its maker is unknown (from the collection of Shane Speal).

A headstock detail shows the hand-whittled tuning peg.

Michael Ballerini of Clawson, Michigan, built this acoustic soprano ukulele around an antique cigar box, using a set neck as opposed to a through neck. He used old-growth cherry for both the neck and the fretboard.

Michael gave this ukulele a set neck as opposed to a stick-through box neck.

Shoe Peg was a brand of cigar sold by the Erlinda Cigar Company of Wisconsin.

This fretless resonator guitar appeared during the 2010 CBG Extravaganza in Huntsville, Alabama. The builder is unknown (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

The builder used a found metal object as a resonator. This photo also shows a wooden biscuit between the bridge and the resonator.

Tomi-O Hartwell’s guitar was designed as a six-string version of Shane Speal’s “Old Faithful” (from the collection of Shane Speal).

Tomi-O used three sets of paired strings on this build for a fuller sound.

Shane Speal’s autograph adorns this Tomi-O custom build.

Screws and washers are used as string trees in Tomi-O’s six-string version of Shane Speal’s “Old Faithful.”

Al Hamilton built this guitar as a gift for Purgatory Hill’s melaniejane.

An antique box and an old wrench make up most of this guitar. Wait . . . Did someone say makeup?

Al built this cigar box guitar so that it could be opened to reveal a makeup mirror and other girlie essentials.

This super-simple two-string instrument resulted from my attempt to use a minimal number of very simple tools and materials to make a playable instrument. I used the handle from a broken lawn implement, a drill, sandpaper, and a couple of screws.

I attached a piece of adhesive sandpaper to the neck dowel and used that to shape both the nut and the bridge of this guitar.

Built by Tomi-O Hartwell, this Padron double-neck electric-body cigar box guitar has two switched single-coil guitar pickups (from the collection of Shane Speal).

The guitar splits a standard set of guitar strings—bass strings on top and lighter strings on the bottom.

Montreal’s Lenny Prioth-Robert started his company, Daddy Mojo, as a cigar box guitar–building enterprise. The demand was so great that he started having boxes custom made in the Dominican Republic for consistency. While Daddy Mojo still makes cigar box guitars, Lenny has moved on to making handmade and hand-assembled boutique electric guitars of the highest quality, often collaborating with artists on their design.

Here are two very early specimens. The acoustic three-string on the right has an oak neck and uses a bolt as a nut. Both guitars use picture-hanging hardware for string trees. The five-string resonator guitar on the left came later and has a piezo pickup, a maple neck, and a plastic nut. It’s also built around a custom-order cedar box, while the older instrument uses a found box (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

The five-string has an older Daddy Mojo logo on the headstock and a newer one on the back of the box.

In the early years, Lenny decorated his headstocks with cigar labels, as shown on the headstock of the three-string guitar.

The three-string bears the original Daddy Mojo logo, a frog playing a banjo, in the center of the back.

Mike Lowe (aka Old Lowe) of Rockwall, Texas, built this four-string acoustic guitar/dulcimer hybrid with diatonic fretting from a Padron box (favored by many builders for its tone and beautiful grain patterns). He used red oak for the neck. The highest string (called the melody string by dulcimer players) is doubled so the two strings are played as one for a fuller sound. He adorned the corners with stencil work and the sound hole with a pull-tab.

Photo by Mike Lowe

This John Lowe creation belongs to singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist melaniejane, who performs with singer/ songwriter pat mAcdonald as the cigar box guitar–based duo Purgatory Hill.

This view of melaniejane’s Lowebow Lyre shows the dual output system (one for the bass string and one for the guitar strings) and builder John Lowe’s signature bottle cap string anchors.

GEORGE BENSON

The eight-time Grammy winner started his career as “Little Georgie Benson, the Kid from Gilmore Alley,” playing a cigar box ukulele on street corners.

Diane Sutliff used the lid from a retired paint can to create a resonator for this little (17" [43cm] scale) three-string guitar.

Diane built the neck/headstock profile by gluing three pieces of pre-shaped oak molding together. As you can see, this profile provides ample “string break” to keep the strings secure against the nut.

A simple hinge makes a perfect tailpiece for this build.

Microwave Dave Gallaher, Huntsville, Alabama, 2010.

Microwave Dave Gallaher plays on stage at the Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza in Huntsville, Alabama, 2010.

John Lowe, aka Johnny Lowebow, at the Holiday Music Festival in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

This super-simple, single-string guitar was constructed by Travis “Uncle Crow” Richardson.
It resides in the lobby of the Holiday Music Motel in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

Uncle Crow used a furniture fastener as a bridge on his one-string cigar box guitar.

This ingenious banjo/guitar/dulcimer hybrid is by Mike Lowe. Mike started with a Padron box to build a five-string. The fifth string begins at the fifth fret like a five-string banjo, but the tuner for the fifth string is located at the tail end of the instrument. Mike used diatonic (dulcimer) fretting and a short 15" (38 cm) scale. He fashioned the bridge from bois d’arc (also called osage orange).

Photo by Mike Lowe

This custom order was made by Darren Brown of Nova Scotia for Shane Speal (from the collection of Shane Speal).

Darren fashioned a decorative bridge out of scraps for his three-string.

This colorful three-string Deco guitar by Chicago builder Jeremiah Lee is reminiscent of a dramatic sunset.

Jeremiah’s intricate application of stains and dyes, embellished with metalwork, creates dramatic visuals.

Jeremiah puts a great deal of thought into pieces like this rosewood saddle. Note how the shape echoes the decorative coloring.

Jeremiah used an unusual configuration to fit three tuners into this head stock.

Vintage Spotlight

Both of these antique pieces date from the late nineteenth century. Their makers are unknown (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

One of the oldest instruments in Bill Jehle’s collection, this violin is initialed and dated by the builder: A. H. B. ’89 (as in 1889). In 1994, Shane Speal commissioned luthiers Jeff Hostetter and Amy Hopkins to restore the violin to a fully playable condition. Two years and many shop hours later, it was returned to Speal, strung up and ready for the concert stage.

This cigar box ukulele was purchased by Bill Jehle at an estate auction. The accompanying note indicates it was built around 1892 as a gift for an uncle named Albert Leiff.

Lloyd “MadMan” Madansky of Arroyo Grande, California, built this crutch six-string cigar box guitar (from the collection of Shane Speal).

The tuners are arranged three on each vertical member.

Vintage Spotlight

This tiny ukulele was built from the wood of a discarded cigar box by an unknown maker. Collector Bill Jehle calls it “inside out” because the wood was reversed so that the box’s label is visible on the inside of the ukulele. Though it’s more a piece of folk art than a playable instrument, the one remaining string testifies that it once made music.

A detail of the headstock shows the hand-carved nut and tuners.

The first Purgatory Hill Harp had the two oak dowels set far apart. Blues musician Richard Johnston eventually convinced builder John Lowe to bring the two necks closer together so he could use a conventional slide to play the instrument.

For this Purgatory Hill Harp, John added a sculpted wooden armrest.

Builder John Lowe ingeniously perches two magnetic pickups in a shared arrangement under the three guitar strings in this bass/guitar hybrid.

A close-up shows the tuner configuration.

Lenny Piroth-Robert photographed this four-string Tenor Clydesdale model with a minihumbucker pickup at the Daddy Mojo factory in Montreal.

Photo Courtesy Daddy Mojo Guitars

Natural finish and twin f-holes give the Clydesdale an understated elegance.

Photo Courtesy Daddy Mojo Guitars

Built and played by Chicago’s Glenn Kaiser (whose Resurrection Band, 1972–2000, revolutionized Christian music), this single-string instrument employs a simple pine neck, thumbtacks for position markers, an eyebolt tuner, and a copper plumbing part for a slide.

Here’s a close up of the eyebolt Glenn used for a tuner. Note also the slotted brass screw he uses as a string nut.

Paul “Uncle Pauly” Bessette made frets for this three-string paint can lid resonator guitar by embedding copper wire into the oak neck. Red frets act as position markers.

Paul used a piece of oak and a cut-off finish nail to make the saddle and bridge for this guitar.

A piece of tarnished metal makes an artful string anchor.

This Oliva four-string acoustic is also equipped with a piezo pickup. I used a thin handsaw to cut away the headstock area so it recedes from the fretboard. I created a nut by lining up four brass slotted screws and glued wood wings on the sides of the headstock area so I could cut it into an homage to a Fender Telecaster. I can’t identify the wood I used for the neck other than to say that it was left over from a neighborhood remodeling job—and it’s really pretty. Pecan has been suggested.

When I built guitar #5, I decided I was going to get this headstock thing right! Fender inspired the shape, and I equipped it with a half-set of mandolin tuners.

I also experimented with using slotted screws as a nut. I had to file out the slots for the heavier strings. For the lighter strings, setting the slot at a slight angle prevented the string from buzzing in the slot.

Feeding a penchant for unexpected visuals, I turned to an issue of Cigar Aficionado for artwork to line this box.

Vintage Spotlight

This fiddle was made from an Owl cigar box by an unknown builder. The bow was also hand carved. The name of the builder and the vintage of the build are both lost to time (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

A detail shows the owl carved into the headstock.

The maker of this fiddle carried the owl theme into the creation of the fiddle’s sound holes.

I built these two three-string cigar box guitars side by side (one for me and one for my daughter) using salvaged tuners and some maple offcuts from a neighbor’s remodeling project. Both guitars are acoustic. The good news about these two cigar box guitars is that they sound great, owing in part to the fortuitous choice of maple for the necks. I made the headstocks a bit too short—lesson learned.

For one guitar, I made the nut out of a piece of oak dowel and used eyebolts for string trees.

For the second guitar, I used a piece of natural horn set into a slot for the nut.

Texas builder Brian “Bairfoot Cajun” Romero crafted this Iron Mask three-string electric guitar (from the collection of Shane Speal).

Al Hamilton built this two-string around an antique King Oscar cigar box.

Al used a salvaged saddle and bridge from an acoustic guitar on his three-string build.

ROY CLARK

The great country guitarist and banjo player (and Hee-Haw host) first played an instrument his father made from a cigar box and ukulele neck with four strings.

This Lowebow Lyre was fashioned by builder John Lowe (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

John autographs and numbers his creations.

Shane Speal, York, Pennsylvania, 2010.

Shane Speal plays alongside his son Shane Jr. at the Cigar Box Guitar Festival in York, Pennsylvania, 2010.

Justin Johnson, Chicago CBG Festival, 2012.

Violin maker Peter Seman collects unusual violins. He acquired this antique cigar box violin and restored it in his Skokie, Illinois, violin shop. The original maker is unknown.

Peter added a new bridge and crafted a custom tailpiece and chin rest to restore this antique to playable condition.

This antique box on Peter’s restoration recalls a time when cigars sold two for a nickel.

Huntsville, Alabama, builder John Nickel built this board-on-box cigar box bass, which is designed to mount on a microphone stand (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

An interior shot of the bass shows a Radio Shack piezo buzzer and mounting hardware.

John included his signature inlay.

Tomi-O Hartwell built this three-string cigar box guitar as a tribute to Shane Speal, King of the Cigar Box Guitar (from the collection of Shane Speal).

BLUES LEGENDS ROBERT JOHNSON AND HIS STEPSON ROBERT LOCKWOOD JR.

“One day when Robert Johnson was taking a break from his roaming, he sat down to make a guitar with his young pupil, Robert Lockwood Jr. What they made wasn’t a diddley bow, the one-string instrument many fledgling bluesmen built by stretching a piece of wire between two nails. Johnson and Lockwood were intent on building something more sophisticated. Johnson shaped the wood and then made the body from a phonograph. Lockwood, who had been happily strumming away on Johnson’s Stella, used the guitar for just over a year before it began to tear apart because ‘we couldn’t get the right type of glue.’”

Pennsylvania builder and author of Handmade Music Factory Mike Orr repurposed an old, enameled bedpan to create this unusual fretless four-string electric guitar that he named a “Shitar.”

Mike left the label on as a tribute to the materials and as a reminder to “relax.”

He floated a four-pole magnetic pickup beneath the strings to enable amplified playing.

Steampunk Brundle Fly features Chicagoan Shawn Denman’s own shop-built maple neck with an ebony-stained fretboard. This six-string electric has two individually switched single coil pickups and a hand-carved bone nut. Shawn used jumbo nickel/silver fret wire and crafted his own string trees out of brass. Yes, this guitar also sports a giant brass fly.

Detail of the giant brass fly. Let’s say the extra weight improves this guitar’s sustain.

Vintage Spotlight

The unknown maker of this beautifully crafted antique four-string fiddle carved a deer’s head into the headstock and also into the tip of the accompanying bow. The tailpiece and sound holes echo the deer motif (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

The tailpiece is held in place with braided twine. The fiddle has been outfitted with modern violin strings, but it’s missing a bridge.

A detailed view shows the deer carved into the headstock and bow.

Mike Lowe used red oak for the neck and overlaid a bois d’arc (osage orange) 16" (40.5cm) scale fretboard. He gave this guitar diatonic (dulcimer) fretting and doubled the melody string. The headstock has been adorned with an antique pull-tab.

Photo by Mike Lowe

The bridge is built from red oak and bois d’arc.

Photo by Mike Lowe

This fretless three-string is the third cigar box guitar I built. I crafted it fairly early on, before there were online communities supporting builders with ideas and tips. For this build, I used a fancy Rocky Patel box with curved sides and a black lacquer finish. This build was my first to feature a piezo pickup. I used poplar for the neck, horn for the nut, and a scrap of rosewood for the bridge. The first time I plugged it in and strummed it, I was totally hooked.

I cut these sound holes with a hole saw. When I realized that the inside of the box could be seen through the larger sound holes, I opted to dress up the box’s interior with a piece of Japanese art paper glued inside.

Montreal builder Lenny Piroth-Robert, aka Daddy Mojo, designed this four-string resonator guitar using a custom-built box and handmade resonator and cover.

A detail shot shows the custom metalwork on the Daddy Mojo Resophonic.

SLEEPY JOHN ESTES

Born January 25, 1904, in Ripley, TN, Sleepy John Estes was one of a sharecropping family of ten. His father Daniel was a guitarist, and this influenced his son to play. Young Estes was blinded in his right eye from a baseball accident at the age of six, limiting further athletic endeavors. His interest in music prompted him to build crude guitars from cigar boxes, which he played at local house parties as a child.

Steampunk Ophelia, a four-string acoustic/electric by Shawn Denman, has a maple neck with a red-oak fretboard and jumbo nickel/silver frets with a bone nut. The fret dots are inlays of wire solder cut in cross section. It uses a piezo pickup for amplification. Shawn inlaid a coin he found into the headstock. The sound hole cover is a repurposed computer fan guard. He used brass pipes to craft the arm rest and leg rest.

Shawn covered the tailpiece with brass and decorated it with earring parts. A skeleton key serves as the bridge.

Vintage Spotlight

The builder of this one-string fiddle is unknown, but the instrument comes from England. Still playable, it does not include the original bow. The case is hand built as well and bears a date stamp in the bottom inside that clearly reads, “December 24, 1920,” suggesting this one-string fiddle was a Christmas gift.

The builder carved this headstock right out of the neck.

The body of this one-string fiddle from the collection of Bill Jehle has elegant, book-matched f-holes.

My acoustic CAO Bat Wing three-string has a short (17" [43cm]) scale and diatonic fretting. The neck is from 100-year-old mahogany pulled out of the trash at a remodeling site. Following Diane Sutliff’s lead, I used a scarf joint for the headstock and a zero fret as the nut. The fretboard is bird’s-eye maple.

In order to widen the headstock a bit, I glued another strip of mahogany to the side (Diane Sutliff calls these “wings”) to provide support for the last tuner and to give me something to shape.

The tailpiece here is a small piece of carved ebony attached with two brass screws. I set a piece of fret wire into the ebony to keep the strings from cutting into the wood.

On the bottom end, a hose clamp serves as a bridge. A ¼" (0.5cm) phono output jack is housed inside a copper coupling.

The Electric Lowebow Stick by John Lowe is a remarkably fun and versatile instrument to play. It can be held like a guitar and thumb-strummed while the player presses the string against the dowel, or laid across a lap and played with a slide in the non-strumming hand.

Instead of a cigar box as a resonating chamber, the stick relies on a hand-wound, single-pole pickup plugged into the amplifier of your choice to bring up the volume.

The stick’s single string is tensioned and tuned with a guitar tuner. A screw serves as a nut.

Created by builder John Lowe, the Lowebow (a bass/guitar hybrid) appears in many iterations and seems to constantly evolve. This Masonite one features a double resonator and a movable nut (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

John’s trademark bottle-cap string anchors adorn the bottom of the guitar.

John fits three tuners in a single dowel by spiraling them around. The piece of titanium protruding from beneath the strings is a movable nut, which he slides up or down to instantly change keys, even in mid-song.

Musician and cigar box guitar builder Kevin Kraft has four children, and all have built and played cigar box guitars. Kevin guided one of his children in building this single-stringed instrument. What a great way to spend family time together.

The fretless guitar is the essence of simplicity.

Sam “Wichita Sam” Wood ran the stick corner to corner to make a square box three-string guitar that sits comfortably between the player’s knees.

Sam used picture-hanging hardware to anchor the strings.

This view shows how the neck is fitted into the corner of the square box.

Jerry Thompson, York, Pennsylvania, 2010.

Bill Jehle, Hunstville, Alabama, 2010.

Kevin Kraft, Kansas City, Missouri, 2010.

The builder of this fretless five-string banjo from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is unknown, as is its vintage (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

A detail photo shows the location of the fifth-string tuner.

A piece of tin has been used as a tailpiece/string anchor.

Steampunk Victoria features Shawn Denman’s handmade maple neck with an ebony-stained red-oak fretboard. He opted for jumbo nickel/silver frets and crafted position markers using cross sections of a plastic chopstick. This six-string electric uses an EQ-7545R bar piezo pickup under the bridge.

Shawn salvaged gears from an old pocket watch to trick out Steampunk Victoria. These green LEDs draw on an internal 9-volt battery.

LARRY FINE, “LARRY” OF THE THREE STOOGES

Fine was a master of the one-string cigar box violin during his pre-Stooges days in the Yiddish vaudeville circuit. A classically trained violinist, Fine would entertain the crowds by bringing a crude-looking cigar box instrument on stage and performing standards on it. In fact, there was a tradition of using one-string cigar box violins in vaudeville as a comedy prop. A former vaudevillian himself, W.C. Fields revived an old cigar box fiddle routine in his 1936 movie, Poppy. The comedy bit can be found with a quick search on YouTube for “W. C. Fields - Cigar Box Violin.”

This San Cristobal three-string acoustic showed up while I was photographing guitars during the 2010 CBG Extravaganza in Huntsville, Alabama. Its builder is unknown (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

The angled headstock was created with pocket-holes and screws.

Vintage Spotlight

This cigar box guitar by an unknown maker dates back to the 1940s and is thought to have been built in Wisconsin. It has remnants of cutouts from Captain Midnight comic books affixed to the top, which leads owner Bill Jehle to think it may have belonged to a child (Captain Midnight was a popular radio show in the ’30s and ’40s).

Two whittled tuning pegs remain—the nut and third peg are lost to time.

Jeremiah Lee draws on art deco themes to turn his cigar box guitars into works of art. His instruments have been exhibited in several art galleries. This four-string fretted instrument is built around an asymmetrical cigar chest. Jeremiah uses paints, stains, dyes, and metalwork to embellish his guitars.

This photo offers a closer look at Jeremiah’s work. Note how Jeremiah used paint and stain to emulate inlay in this fretboard.

In addition to carving his headstocks, Jeremiah often covers them with decorative metalwork.

This Red Neck guitar provided a lesson for me in where not to put a sound hole. With the instrument in playing position, the player’s strumming hand blocks most of the sound. I added a pickup so it can be played through an amplifier.

In my early explorations in headstock design, I tried creating more of a string break by gluing a piece of ¾" (2cm) poplar to the back of the neck (also ¾" [2cm] poplar), then shaping the joint. It worked, but it’s not a strong joint. In fact, it broke while I was shaping it and had to be reglued. It has since held up nicely under all the use my nephew Michael has given it.

Here is a nicely crafted “split neck” guitar by John Nickel of Huntsville, Alabama. The guitar’s two necks share a standard set of guitar strings, with the heavier/lower strings on the upper neck and the lighter/higher strings on the bottom neck (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

Through-necks are laminated with oak flanked by black walnut. John “signs” his work by embedding nickels in his builds.

This unusual KimmerO creation uses four strings and a diatonic scale. The short-scale neck is made from builder Kimmer Olesak’s signature paduak.

KimmerO favors the “zero fret,” in which a piece of jumbo fret wire serves as the string nut.

Adding a whimsical touch to this cigar box guitar, KimmerO built a spring-wound music box into his Cuban Babies Music Box. The music box plays “When You Wish Upon a Star.”

To create the six-string, electric Steampunk Elizabeth guitar, Shawn Denman started with the neck from a First Act Strat copy he found at the Salvation Army. He fastened two Tabak Coffee Infused Cigar boxes together for the body, which lend this instrument a wonderful fragrance (Tabak cigars are soaked in coffee). He also used two pickups, accompanying electronics, and the bridge from the salvaged First Act guitar. What looks like a railroad spike on the right is actually half of a chrome shoe-horn. Shawn affixed the other half of the shoehorn to the copper pipe visible at left.

Other components of the guitar include a ½" (1.5cm) copper pipe, automobile taillight bulbs, compass body, and three f-holes trimmed with gold paint.

While they won’t light up literally, these retired light bulbs certainly light up the steampunk theme.

A “canjo” uses a tin can as a resonating chamber. This one, built by Glenn Kaiser, also uses a piezo buzzer as a pickup so that it can be played through an amplifier.

In an effort to demonstrate building a musical instrument from whatever you have, Glenn used eyebolts and wing nuts for tuners, drywall screws for string guides, and a cotter pin for a nut.

A long, thin bolt serves as a string nut for this electrified, two-string canjo.

Using a simple pine stick, an eyebolt, and a Florentine cookie tin, Glenn Kaiser built another playable three-stringed instrument.

Salvaged guitar tuners finish off this cookie tin creation. Note how the builder has retrofitted some screws as string guides.

A detail shot shows the cookie tin used for Glenn’s three-string guitar.

Bill Jehle found this fully fretted cigar box ukulele in a junk shop in Portland, Maine, in the 1970s.

The tailpiece string anchor is a model of simplicity.

REVEREND GARY DAVIS

“He told me that when he was a little kid, he used to play a guitar someone had made for him out of a cigar box, and there was this guy that used to come through town who they called “the gittar man”—that was the only name they knew him by. He would come around once or twice a year, play in the streets, and pick up some money and move on, and ‘Candyman’ was a piece Gary learned from the gittar man” (as told by guitar ace, Dave Van Ronk, in his book The Mayor of MacDougal Street).

This four-string electric was built by Rob “Hitone” Baker, a guitar maker and cigar box guitar maker whom Bill Jehle met through projectguitar.com. This guitar is equipped with a whammy bar fashioned out of cabinet hardware.

Clever use of screw eyes, threaded rod, and wing nuts create a bridge.

Splitting a set of six (three left/three right) tuners between two three-string guitars gave me the idea to make this pair—one fretted, one fretless—out of matching boxes. I cut the headstocks so they mirrored one another. Each has a piezo pickup under the bridge and a volume control knob. Some builders argue that the volume control isn’t necessary with a piezo because the output is quite low. Piezos are notorious for feeding back, though, and I like to have a volume control to dial it down if things get out of control.

I split a set of six tuners between the two guitars in this mirrored set of “sister” guitars.

The cigar boxes I chose each had a cigar overleaf with artwork that I used to decorate the insides of the boxes.

This instrument, made by John Lowe for blues musician Richard Johnston, combines a single-string electric bass guitar on one neck with a three-string electric guitar on the other. The two instruments are played together with a slide. John uses his own hand-wound magnetic pickups to amplify the sound, and each neck (bass and guitar) has its own output jack. Shortly after it was built, Richard played this instrument (along with a high hat, snare, and kick drum) as a one-man band at the 2001 International Blues Challenge and won first prize in the international competition. He was also awarded the coveted Albert King Guitar Award.

John had set the two necks so far apart on this first Hill Harp that Richard had to buy a 6" (15cm) piece of pipe from a plumbing supplier to use as a slide in order to cover all the strings.

Vintage Spotlight

This tiny cigar box guitar was apparently made for a child circa 1920 by an unknown builder and is owned by Bill Jehle. The builder cut a cigar box in half and made a miniature six-string instrument. It has hand-carved tuners and a very small neck.

Just three of the original hand-carved tuning pegs remain on this child’s guitar.

Diane Sutliff’s innovative tuning dots enhance the user friendliness of her guitars. Starting with the heaviest string on this Padron three-string, you simply press the string down over the dot and tune the next string to match the pitch of the first string. Repeat the process by fretting the second string at the dot and tuning the third string to match pitch, and you’re done.

Diane adorned the sound hole of her Padron three-string with a salvaged broach, which complements the wood grain. The centered sound hole shows the through neck, so she decorated the neck with red fabric.

David plays in York, Pennsylvania, 2010.

David Williams, aka “One String Willie,” plays his diddley bow in Huntsville, Alabama, 2010.

David strums on a cigar box guitar in Hunstville, Alabama, 2010.

This Daddy Mojo issue four-string Deluxe model is hand painted by street artist Tim Barnard. It features a maple neck, rosewood fingerboard, and a high-gloss finish.

Photo Courtesy Daddy Mojo Guitars

A close-up shot shows the detail of Tim Barnard’s painting on the Daddy Mojo Deluxe model.

Photo Courtesy Daddy Mojo Guitars

A nicely crafted six-string “deco” electric cigar box guitar built by T. Stump and owned by Bill Jehle uses two hand-wound magnetic pickups.

Two pieces of matching Corian provide the string nut and tail guard. This headstock has been finished off with decorative wood extensions and a striking medallion.

Kevin Kraft helped his youngest daughter make this two-stringer from a discarded box.

For this kid’s building project, Kevin used eyebolts as tuners and a thin bolt for a bridge.

Diane Sutliff built this La Fendrich three-string acoustic cigar box guitar around a diminutive antique cigar box.

Diane prefers the “zero fret” to other string nut options. The zero fret is made by setting a piece of heavier (jumbo) fret wire in the nut position. She often uses three-on-a-plate tuners for her three-string acoustic builds. Diane stained the oak neck to bring out the grain pattern.

Brass, dye, and woodcarving all interplay in this three-stringer by Jeremiah Lee.

Note how the shape of the wooden saddle is repeated in both the metalwork and the colored patterns.

Pennsylvanian builder David “One String Willie” Williams got things right on his first attempt at cigar box guitar building. He performs with this four-string, and as “One String Willie” with a single-string instrument called a diddley bow.

David cut the headstock to match his guitar’s sound holes.

Build #3 from my first book, Cigar Box Guitars, is a style some purists refer to as a “solid body electric guitar in a cigar box wrapper.” But I always follow the first rule of cigar box guitar building: there are no rules. What a gas to be able to build and play your own electric guitar!

A close-up photo shows the headstock with tuners and string tree.

ALBERT COLLINS

His first guitar was made from a cigar box: “People back in them days couldn’t afford no guitar, man. I took a hay-baling wire and it was rough, man! You couldn’t do nothing with it, so I just be banging it!”

Diane Sutliff built this dulcimer by fastening two Padron boxes together. She uses the bottom of the boxes as her soundboard for dulcimers, because the wood is often thinner and has a nicer tonal quality. This four-string uses a doubled melody string and chromatic (guitar) fretting.

Diane used cherry for the fretboard on top of a maple neck and brass rod for the bridge. She protects her fretboards from “string bite” by setting a piece of fret wire right next to the string holes.

This tin cigar box three-string guitar was built by Al Hamilton (from the collection of Shane Speal).

Al installed three-on-a-plate tuners with the tuners facing forward.

This Delft Blauw cookie tin guitar by Diane Sutliff has a maple neck. A second board is glued under the first as a support for the part of the neck that has been thinned down to accept the lid.

Diane glues two pieces of maple together to prevent the neck from warping under the tension of the strings.

Michael Ballerini built this combination harp/guitar to enter into one of Cigar Box Nation’s occasional themed building contests—this one for double-necked guitars. Michael selected old-growth cherry milled more than fifty years ago for the guitar neck and harmonic curve.

Michael’s harp guitar combines a six-string guitar and six harp strings.

This fretless four-string electric by Mike Orr uses spoons to form a string anchor, saddle, and faux whammy bar. Guitar labels and upholstery tacks make the position markers.

A detail shows the slotted spoons Mike used to make up the tailpiece and saddle. Note how wing nuts have been seated into the spoon’s slots to support the bridge.

Glenn Kaiser used a board-on-box design for this thee-string guitar.

It uses a simple bolt as a string nut.

Thumbtacks have been employed as position markers.

Built by Paul Bessette of Uncle Pauly’s Boxes, this three-string cigar box guitar has an oak neck with a carved headstock.

Paul fitted a can opener into a slot in an oak dowel to make the biscuit and bridge for this resonator guitar.

Vintage Spotlight

This instrument by an unknown builder is best described as a cross between a guitar and a ukulele. Its four strings with a neck-through-body construction are reminiscent of a tenor banjo (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

A close-up shows the hand-carved pine tuning pegs.

The maker made ingenious use of wooden dowels to create the saddle/bridge.

BIG BILL BROONZY

Young Bill Broonzy first played music on a cornstalk fiddle, eventually graduating to one made from a cigar box. He got so good at playing the instrument that the owner of the plantation he lived on invited him to play at picnics and dances.

The Daddy Mojo Standard Deluxe model with La Escepcion label features four strings and one minihumbucker pickup.

Photo Courtesy Daddy Mojo Guitars

As demand for his Daddy Mojo cigar box guitars increased, the resourceful Lenny Piroth-Robert contacted a cigar box manufacturer in the Dominican Republic about making standard-sized boxes to his specifications. This decision simplified production and also enabled Lenny to get his boxes imprinted with the Daddy Mojo brand. Pictured here is a Daddy Mojo Standard Deluxe four-string showing a DM branded box.

When Kevin Kraft went looking for cigar boxes to make his first cigar box guitar, the closest thing he could find was this silverware chest. He paid a dollar for it and, using eyebolt tuners, built his first homemade guitar.

Kevin used a brass hinge to reinforce the string holes and a bolt for a bridge.

Kansas City guitar builder and blues musician Kevin Kraft used a heavy cotter pin for a bridge. Drain screens dress up the sound holes of this Cohiba three-string.

Kevin used a woodburner to place position markers on the top side of his guitar neck, where they’re easier to see.

Vintage Spotlight

This is Bill Jehle’s best example of an “Uncle Enos” banjo, built circa 1910. Daniel Carter Beard, cofounder of the Boy Scouts of America, published plans for a cigar box banjo in 1884 in St. Nicholas Magazine and later in his American Boy’s Handy Book.

The painted headstock has been decorated with a cutout picture of a rose.

Diane Sutliff used mandolin tuners and an oak neck with a 17" (43cm) scale for this four-string acoustic guitar. The third string is doubled with the fourth. This one has a brass theme: she used cross sections of brass rod for position markers and brass wire super-glued into the grooves for frets.

A brass machine screw as a bridge rests atop an oak saddle. Diane fashioned the string anchor out of picture-hanging hardware.

This four-string guitar/dulcimer with diatonic frets gets an acoustic boost from a 6" (15cm) “Lowecone”—a brass resonator cone that Mike spins himself.

Photo by Mike Lowe

Mike Lowe built the biscuit (the wooden piece that sits atop the cone) for this guitar out of red oak and bois d’arc (osage orange). He added a nice decorative touch to the fretboard end as well.

Photo by Mike Lowe

Kimmer Olesak built this guitar around an old cookie tin. It has a standard scale neck with diatonic fretting, and he used a piezo pickup for amplified playing.

A silk-screened graphic adorns KimmerO’s cookie tin guitar.

This beautifully crafted, modern, five-string banjo was built by an unknown maker around a Santa Clara cigar box (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

The fifth-string tuner is mounted in a wooden block.

The addition of two wooden wings to Richard Johnston’s Purgatory Hill Harp by builder John Lowe makes this instrument reminiscent of a Gibson Flying V.

Richard has put more than a few miles on this John Lowe creation, with a lot of those musical miles spent busking on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee.

This four-string acoustic/electric lap guitar uses two cigar boxes and is designed by Ted Crocker to lie on the player’s lap and be played lap steel style.

Photo by Ted Crocker

It is amplified by an original Ted Crocker hand-wound Stonehenge pickup.

Photo by Ted Crocker

BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON

When Willie Johnson was just five years old, he told his father he wanted to preach the Gospel and play guitar when he grew up. To encourage his son, his father made him a one-string cigar box guitar using a simple stick-through-box construction. Young Willie learned to play melodies up and down that lonely string using a pocketknife to fret the notes. This became essential training to his unique style of playing, for later on in life, he would incorporate the single-string melodies on his six-string guitar. The best example of this is his phenomenal song “Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground).” It should be noted that “Dark Was the Night” is one of the songs NASA chose for the golden record inside the Voyager Spacecraft. The song was chosen and championed by famed astronomer, Dr. Carl Sagan. Sagan commented, “Johnson’s song concerns a situation he faced many times: nightfall with no place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight.”

Diane Sutliff built this Casa Torano three-string acoustic/piezo electric with a rosewood fretboard over an oak neck. She’s given it chromatic (guitar) fretting.

A heavy brass hinge provides a solid string anchor.

Kimmer Olesak crafted this three-string with diatonic fretting from an antique box. KimmerO favors padauk for necks, a wood that starts out orange and goes deep red with the application of an oil finish. This sweet-sounding instrument also uses an upward-facing sound hole, directing more sound to the player.

The sound hole is positioned to direct music to the player, suggesting an instrument designed for entertaining oneself.

A detail of the artwork on the antique cigar box also shows the volume knob visible at the bottom left. This guitar is outfitted with a piezo pickup so it can be played through an amplifier.

Darren Dukes’ double-neck cigar box guitar combines a resonator four-string with an acoustic four-string (from the collection of Shane Speal).

A detail shows the double neck’s sound holes.

Kurt Schoen is the builder of this three-string resonator guitar (from the collection of Shane Speal).

A detail of the brass tailpiece on Kurt’s guitar shows the etched autograph.

The unknown builder used a red marker to indicate fret lines and decorate the fretboard on this La Flor four-string fretless guitar and made nice use of S-shaped sound holes (from the collection of Bill Jehle).

This bridge looks like it might be Corian, a material that can be worked with woodworking tools but has a nice density for conducting sound vibrations.

This six-string electric has a maple neck and rosewood fingerboard. Known as the Daddy Mojo Dolorosa model, it is adorned with a silk-screened sacred heart design.

A detail shot shows the sacred heart design on Lenny Piroth-Robert’s Daddy Mojo Dolorosa.

THE UKULELE

TWO UKES

Ukulele #1

The first ukulele I can remember seeing was blue. My dad had bought it for my mom in the early sixties because he thought she might like to learn how to play it. It had a picture of a hula dancer stenciled in white paint on the front of the body, and a plastic fretboard installed with screws.

It was tiny, a soprano, and I remember my dad explaining that it should be tuned to the musical phrase “My dog has fleas,” which he sang for me to remember. My older brother Greg says he first learned to form chords on that blue ukulele. My sister Diane remembers family sing-alongs, notably “The Sidewalks of New York.” I played the blue uke, too, following chord diagrams in a well-worn beginner book.

Radio personality Arthur Godfrey had helped popularize the ukulele in the fifties, starting what became known as the “second wave” of the ukulele’s popularity. (The first stateside ukulele craze began in San Francisco in 1915, at an event called the Panama– Pacific International Exposition.)

The humble uke lost popularity in the mid sixties, when the six-string guitar became the lingua franca for rebelious folkies. I also blame novelty singer Tiny Tim for the ukulele’s crash in popularity.

Over the decades, my dad’s blue uke got plenty of attention, and not a little abuse. I remember seeing it after my parents passed away, when we were cleaning out the house I grew up in. I had thought the blue uke had gone the way of all things, but I recently learned that one of my sisters kept it.

When I saw this ukulele again, I decided to get it ready for its second act.

The years had not been kind to this little guy, but the essential pieces were all there, in good condition.

When the little Harmony ukulele came to me recently, the back, which had split into five pieces, was being held together with packing tape and a nail.

Once I removed the nail and tape, the back came off easily enough. It was split in four places. Although only one split went the full length, I pulled the others apart, too, to make it easier to repair.

I covered a sheet of medium-density fiberboard (MDF) with wax paper to provide a flat surface I could glue on, and, one by one, I edge-glued the pieces together.

This photo shows all five pieces glued in place. Once the glue had fully cured, I used a scraper and some medium sandpaper to remove all the old glue from the edges.

I added bracing to give the back a little extra support, and to prevent it from splitting apart again.

With the bracing in place, I used a scraper and sandpaper to smooth out the joints.

I noticed a couple of tiny cracks starting on the instrument’s top, so I installed two braces there as well. I used a scraper and sandpaper to remove the old glue from this edge as well.

Using a screwdriver, I removed and disassembled the tuners, then gave them a thorough cleaning.

After gluing the repaired back to the sides, I used clamps on the support blocks and long, strong rubber bands to hold it in place for drying.

The fretboard and body responded well to a sponge bath using a cotton rag and warm water with just a few drops of mild detergent.

Ukulele #2

In the late eighties I stopped at a garage sale to see what I could find. I’m a fan of old hand tools, so I was probably looking for a diamond in the rust to restore. I didn’t find any tools that day, but I did find a baritone ukulele in poor repair. The back had split along the grain and partly detached from the sides, but the neck and tuners were sound, and the bridge, saddle, and nut all looked good.

A glance told me it was one hundred percent mahogany, so I decided to take it on. At two dollars, how could I not?

My friends at Guitar Works here in Evanston gave me some direction for putting it back together. It started with humidification to reverse wood shrinkage and close the gap between the back parts, followed by gluing some wood splints to the inside to hold the two back pieces together. They told me how to make clamps involving old guitar tuners and retired guitar strings.

I put that ukulele back together, and I’ve been playing it ever since. A few years ago, I had an under-bridge pickup installed along with an on-board equalizer. I did it mostly as a joke—I find this kind of overkill humorous—but it has actually turned out to be useful.

THIRD WAVE

If you’re not living in a cave, it should be pretty clear to you that the ukulele is enjoying its third wave of popularity here in the U.S. I’m quite happy to see its dignity restored, and to see so many legitimate musicians adding the uke to their arsenals.

Easy to learn, easy to play, easy to carry around, it’s the Volkswagen of musical instruments, the people’s strum. Like the cigar box guitar, its accessibility reminds us that for most of human history music has been a DIY phenomenon, not a spectator sport.

What could be more natural than blending these two concepts into a cigar box ukulele? You’ll get all the pride and joy that comes from making your own unique instrument, and with the treasure trove of instructional resources available for the ukulele, you’ll be up and playing in no time.

In selecting materials and parts, try not to get too precious and set your sights on parts or exotic woods that cost a lot or are difficult to find—especially if this is your first build. I want this process to be easy for you so that it moves along quickly enough to keep you interested. Keep it simple and, whenever possible, use what you already have at hand. Borrow tools, or find things that other people have discarded.

You will almost certainly build more than one instrument—and I think you should. Get the first one built, start using it, and then build another, using what you learned from building the first to make the second one even better.

PARTS OF A UKULELE
(AN INTRODUCTION TO CONCEPTS)

Body

The body is the hollow wooden chamber, often hourglass shaped, which makes up the bulk of the instrument. The body is constructed from thin wood, often mahogany or spruce, but sometimes more exotic woods like koa or rosewood. It’s a resonating chamber—that is, an echo chamber that amplifies the sound waves produced by a vibrating string.

The thin board with the hole that faces toward the audience is referred to as the top, or soundboard.

In cigar box uke building, a cigar box serves as the guitar body. As luck would have it, cigar boxes are most often built from cedar, which is a good tone wood. Older boxes were made using solid boards, whereas newer boxes are almost always a cedar plywood.

The box top will act as the soundboard, and the place where the cigars used to be will be the air-filled resonating chamber. Some builders prefer to use the box bottom for the soundboard. Either works. The side where you decide to mount the strings and create a sound hole will be your top.

It will be worth your while to spend some time hunting down a suitable cigar box, because the box you use will be a significant part of what determines the acoustic sound your cigar box ukulele produces. They’re not that hard to find, and they don’t cost much.

I’ll be using an unfinished, solid cedar box I found at an estate sale. I’ve also found old boxes in nice shape for a few dollars on eBay. In comparing boxes, I tap gently on the lid, which will become my soundboard, to determine which one has the nicest resonance.

Sound Hole

The sound hole directs the air vibrating inside out toward the listener. The sound hole can be any shape. With traditional instruments, the holes are most often round, but occasionally they’re shaped like a violin’s “f-hole.” It’s up to you.

Neck

The neck is the part of the ukulele that sticks out from the body and ends with the headstock, where the tuning machines usually live. The fretboard is mounted to the face of the neck.

In terms of wood for the neck, quarter-sawn maple or mahogany would be ideal. You can use any wood, but you’re going to get a nicer acoustic sound if you select one of the woods most frequently used in acoustic guitar building. You might be lucky enough to find maple or mahogany salvaged—find a cabinetmaker or furniture builder and ask about scraps or offcuts. I have found both over the years, but a number of other woods will work as well. Look for something hard and stable, with close grain and small pores. Shy away from home center favorites like pine and poplar, which don’t sound great and will tend to warp over time, or oak or ash, which have open grain. Walnut and cherry make good alternatives to mahogany.

English luthier Stefan Sobell selects wood for the neck by balancing a board between his thumb and forefinger and rapping it with his knuckle to hear its tone. Ideally, your board should ring or resonate a little, rather than producing that dull thup you’ll get from softer woods like pine.

Necks can be made a number of different ways, by building up thinner boards or cutting down thicker ones. I’ll be using a pattern and a band saw to make mine, and for this build I’ll be using a piece of mahogany, 1 ¾" x 1 ¾" (4.5 x 4.5cm), and about 16" (41cm) long.

Scale Length

The scale length refers to the length of the strings, or that section of the strings that vibrates when strummed or plucked. The scale length is physically defined at the top end by the nut, and at the bottom end by the saddle.

Ukuleles usually come in four sizes, defined primarily by the scale length. The longer the scale, the larger the body.

Soprono or Standard—13" (33cm)

Concert or Alto—15" (38cm)

Tenor or Taro Patch—17" (43cm)

Baritone or Bari—19" (48cm)

With a shorter scale, the frets will be closer together. Pick the size that fits your hands. I’m building a concert-sized ukulele, but with some modifications these plans will work for all four sizes.

Fingerboard and Frets

The fingerboard is that magical place where human fingers interface with instrument to adjust the pitch of the vibrating strings by pressing them against metal frets set into the wood.

When you press a string to the fingerboard behind a fret, that fret becomes the top end termination point for the vibrating portion of the string, effectively shortening that string, thereby raising the pitch.

The distance from fret to fret is determined by an arcane bit of math magic. According to NASA engineer and cigar box instrument aficionado Bill Jehle, “The fret positions are determined using the constant 17.817, which is derived from the twelfth root of two: 17.817 = (1−2−1/12)−1.”

Or download a PDF pattern and print it out.

I have also made fretting patterns using an online spacing calculator and a graphics program like InDesign.

The method I use in this build is to pony up a few bucks and use the work that others have already done. That is to say, I bought a set of plans online for download and had them printed out locally.

Your ukulele fingerboard will be made from a separate piece of wood about 2" by 14" by ¼" (5 x 36 x 0.64cm). Any dense, close-grained wood will work—your fingerboard will need to withstand some wear, even with nylon strings. Ebony and rosewood are the woods most commonly used for acoustic guitars, but really, let’s not go crazy. Those exotics are expensive and getting rare. I used a piece of mahogany I had been saving for just such a project.

Strings

This is where the action is. The human player strums the string and the string responds by vibrating the air around it, which our ears and brain understand as sound.

Ukuleles commonly use nylon strings, and manufacturers have developed a number of different formulas for these. Since strings are relatively inexpensive, and need to be replaced from time to time, you can try different styles and see what you like.

Headstock and String Break

The headstock is that wood piece at the top end of the neck where the tuners are mounted. The headstock needs to be angled back so the string makes firm contact with the nut. The angle can be achieved by carving the neck from a solid piece of wood, or by using a thinner piece of lumber and a scarf joint.

Tuners or Tuning Machines

Usually located in the headstock, these small mechanical devices spool up and tension the strings. You turn the tuners to adjust the tension—and therefore pitch—of each string to tune your ukulele. Ukulele tuners have a shorter post than guitar tuners because the headstock is thinner.

The Nut

The nut is the top-end termination point for the vibrating portion of the strings. The slotted nut acts as a spacer and guide for the strings and keeps them from sliding side to side. The nut holds the strings at a useful height above the fretboard—too low, and the string will vibrate against the fretboard; too high, and the instrument will be more difficult to play. Nuts are most commonly made from animal bone but can be crafted from any dense, hard material that you can shape.

Bridge and Saddle

The saddle defines the bottom end of the scale, the termination point for the vibrating portion of the strings. Here, the vibrations from the strings are carried through the saddle and bridge to the soundboard. Denser materials do a better job of this, which is why saddles are also commonly made of bone or high-density composites.

The bridge supports the saddle and strings. High-density woods like rosewood and ebony make good mounts for the bone saddle.

TOOL TIPS

Get a four-in-hand rasp/file combo, one of the most useful tools around. It has four different cutting surfaces in one palm-sized package: two rasps and two coarse files (one flat and one curved of each). It’s great to be able to go from cutting and shaping to smoothing with just a flip of the wrist, and you can use a four-in-hand to cut, shape, smooth, and adjust.

Files are edge tools. That is, they have cutting edges just like knives, chisels, and planes. If you want to keep your files in top working order, handle them with the same respect you would a fine knife. Don’t throw your files in a drawer, clanking against one another—that dulls them. Instead, wrap each file separately in some heavy cloth.

Four-in-hand rasp/file combo.

Keep your edge tools super sharp. Not only does it make for a more gratifying building experience, sharp tools are safer than dull tools. Initial sharpening takes some time and some getting used to, but once you’ve got a good edge on your chisel, knife, or plane, you’ll seldom need to do more than touch it up on a strop.

Whenever I can I prefer to use non-powered hand tools. The kind of tools our grandparents used made very little noise and next to no airborne dust. They’re more forgiving when it comes to slips—it’s pretty hard to hack off a digit with a handsaw, whereas it’s hard to avoid it with a table saw or circular saw. Human-powered hand tools are better for the greater environment and also make for a more pleasing local environment, namely your shop. If your aim is to manufacture on a larger scale, then power tools and dust collection systems will be on your shopping list. If you’re building for pleasure though, keep in mind that power tools can become obstacles to that pleasure. Have you ever tried to do something on a computer, and fifteen minutes into the task realized you could have picked up a pencil or a telephone and been done with it in a minute? If it’s a choice between designing and building a jig so that I can safely make a particular cut with my table saw, or grabbing a chisel and mallet, I’ll go for the chisel and mallet.

In many cases, a number of different tools could be used to accomplish the same task. Part of the thrill of building cigar box guitars stems from the “something from nothing” quality of building an instrument capable of producing serious music out of odds and ends you already own. In a similar spirit, please don’t hamstring your production by thinking you don’t have the right tool for the job, that you need to BUY something. Be flexible. Rather than running out to the tool depot every time you come upon an obstacle, stop and think for a bit. There’s probably another way—often, that way is to borrow. There are many roads to Rome; use the resources you have available now.

I prefer marking knives over pencils for most marking jobs. Making a finer line, the marking knife is more accurate. While a pencil gives you a visual reference, the marking knife gives you a physical reference in addition to the visual. This can be very helpful for lining up a cutting tool such as a saw or a chisel. The downside is that the mistakes don’t erase as readily as pencil marks. In general, I don’t mind builder’s markings or tool impressions making an appearance on the final product. I like the way it connects object to process, a connection I think is too often missing in highly refined, ultra-polished, commercially manufactured goods.

Learn to use hand planes. Start small with a block plane or a smoother and learn how to take it apart, sharpen the iron, assemble it, adjust it, and cut with it. Shaving off a thin, wavy ribbon of wood and feeling the perfectly flat, glassy-smooth surface left behind has to be one of woodworking’s most satisfying experiences.

Hand plane.

Magnets. I have a weird assortment of magnets around my shop that I find useful in all kinds of applications. Rare earth or neodymium magnets are incredibly powerful and quite versatile.

Measure twice, cut once. My grandfather taught building trades. When he’d get a green group of youngsters, he’d instruct them, “Now, when you get ready to cut a board, be sure to err on the side of cutting it too short. You can always stick a piece of wood back on, but it’s harder than the devil to trim a piece that’s too long.” That invariably got their attention and caused them to engage their brains, which was his objective. I think.

Marking knife.

BUILDING A CIGAR BOX UKULELE

Getting the Body Ready

I’ll be using an old cedar box I picked up at an estate sale for the body of my concert-sized cigar box ukulele. This one measures 9 ¼" x 7 ¼" x 3 ¼" (23.5 x 17.75 x 8.25cm) and has a plain top, hinges, and a hasp, which I’ll be removing.

These House of Windsor cigars originally sold for $0.15 (£0.12) apiece. The graphic is nice, but mostly I’m admiring the cedar’s straight, even grain.

These floating interior panels simplify construction for the manufacturer. I’ll be taking them out for now.

The mitered panels just slide out.

We’ll set them aside for now, someplace safe.

The hinges are held in place by prongs that pierce the wood and are then bent over to lock them in place. It’s important to straighten these before you try to remove the hinge, or you’ll end up tearing out a lot of wood.

Once you unlock them, these hinges slide right out.

Having removed all the hardware, I go over the whole box with some 120-grit sandpaper to clean it up.

Cigar boxes are essentially shipping containers; they are not really built to last. The glue is also pretty old, and things dry out, especially in garages and attics. I find a lot of loose glue joints in my lid, so I gently tug them apart in order to glue them back together more securely.

Using a good-quality wood glue and A clamps, I start with the short edge . . .

. . . and then move on to the long edges. The clamps can be removed after an hour or two, but the glue doesn’t totally set for 24 hours, so wait a day before you start to work.

When I tap the bottom of the box to check the resonance, I hear a rattle. It turns out that the bottom needs to be glued back on as well.

I squeeze some wood glue into all the gaps . . .

. . . and clamp them securely.

To position the sound hole, I start by finding the center of the lid.

I’m using a 2" (5cm) hole saw to cut the sound hole.

I determine the location of the hole by eye, roughly a third of the distance from the top.

I measure the location on the outside and transfer the measurement to the inside of the box lid.

In order to protect my bench, I use a 2 x 4 (5 x 10cm) scrap before the lid to drill into. It also prevents tear-out and splintering on the back of the piece.

I start by drilling a small pilot hole.

Turning the lid over, I cut halfway through, but stop before bottoming out. Drilling two holes that meet in the middle eliminates the risk of tear-out.

I turn the lid over, then finish the cut from the inside.

No tear-out, no splintering.

Smooth the sound hole with fine sandpaper.

My finished sound hole. I love this cedar’s grain; it’s very promising in terms of sound.

Bracing the soundboard and the back will strengthen the wood and transfer some of the strings’ pressure out to the sides. Any softer wood (cedar, spruce, pine) will do for braces. Softwoods don’t dampen the soundboard’s vibrations as much as hardwoods.

Cut the braces to length.

Check them for fit. Remember to leave some room for the box’s interior panels.

I use a rasp, then a file, to taper the ends.

Glue the braces in place and use a scrap of wood to distribute your clamping pressure. Always use some sort of padding between your clamps and your project, especially when using butter-soft wood, like this cedar.

I add a fifth brace to support the wood under the bridge where most of the strings’ pressure will be.

Using the box insert as a guide . . .

. . . I mark the width of the interior the box. I’ll rip this piece of wood to the correct width . . .

. . . then cut a couple of small pieces to use as reinforcement blocks inside the instrument.

Lay out all the parts for gluing up the box.

Spread glue evenly over the mitered box inserts. Hit the mitered corners as well.

Likewise the mounting blocks.

Clamp the end parts in place.

Then clamp the sides in place.

I brace the back using two long pieces that will cross in the middle. Here, I’m notching one of the braces at the point where they’ll intersect.

I use a chisel to chop between the saw cuts.

Two pieces of a puzzle.

Glue the braces in place.

I improvise a “clamp.” This can just fit.

Next, I glue the top onto the box.

I am using a clamp for each of the corners, and one clamp on each of the long sides. Keep the clamps on for at least an hour, and don’t work on the box again until the glue has fully cured (24 hours).

Making the Neck

Up till now, all of my instrument builds have been of the stick-through-box variety. This will be my first project using a shaped neck—and I plan to play this uke—so I rummaged through my storage locker and found a gorgeous piece of mahogany, just a little shy of 2" x 2" (5 x 5cm). I’ve been holding on to this piece of wood for so long, I can’t remember where it came from or how it came to be mine. I feel lucky to have it, though. There is enough wood here for four or five ukulele necks.

My neck stock.

1 ¾ " x 1 ¾ " (4.5 x 4.5cm).

Laying my stock on the plan, I see that this piece is just wide enough for the widest part of the neck.

The plans I bought call for a tongue-and-groove mount, but I’m going to be using dowels, so I won’t need the tab at the base.

This is my homemade marking knife and a machinist’s square. I use a marking knife rather than a pencil when I’m marking a cut line. The marking knife has several advantages. I’ll be cutting this board to length with a handsaw, so a nice clean guide will be essential.

I use a junked chisel and a bench grinder to make my marking knife.

I start by making a small nick at the length I’ve determined.

I place the knife into the nick and slide my square up to the marking knife . . .

. . . and extend the mark from edge to edge.

Giving the board a quarter turn, I seat the marking knife in the cut I’ve already made and slide my square up against it . . .

. . . then I extend the line across this second side.

I’ve never had lines align this well using a pencil.

Bench hooks are simple to make, and they’re essential for hand-sawing.

The board on the underside locks the hook to your bench, and the board on the top provides a backstop for your stock. Don’t look for one at the hardware store; bench hooks are old-school. You get to make yours yourself.

I find it easier to start a cut with a handsaw when I have made my line with the marking knife. The saw teeth feel the cut and settle right in.

Success!

I cut out the front-view pattern, sticking closely to the lines.

I repeat the process with the side pattern, omitting the tongue at the bottom.

I use a Sharpie to carry the lines indicating the nut position across the pattern.

The profile is nearly a perfect fit, but I’m going to need to add a little wood at the neck’s base.

I’ll harvest that extra little piece from the end that I just cut my blank away from . . .

. . . so that I’ll cover my tracks with a near-perfect grain match.

I apply glue to both surfaces and let it sit for a minute.

This will need to be clamped tight for at least a few hours, then left alone for twenty-four hours to cure.

Now I need to make the mounting surface of the base flat and perfectly square to the front of the neck.

I bought a roll of 80-grit self-adhesive sandpaper a few years ago, and I have gotten a ton of use out of it. Here, I’m using a piece of wood I salvaged from some junked furniture as a flat surface. I check the board for flatness with a straightedge before sticking the sandpaper to it.

Be extremely careful not to rock your workpiece as you draw it across the sandpaper, especially at the beginning and end of the stroke.

I check my progress frequently and use a square to make sure that the bottom edge remains square with the front of the neck.

Once the base is flat, I tape the side profile in place temporarily, flush with the bottom edge. I use the pattern to determine and mark the position of the nut.

I mark the nut position on the adjacent side, the front of the neck.

I use those marks to align the front pattern.

l carefully line the front and side profiles up with the bottom edge, then I mark the nut position with my marking knife.

My shop is nearly a machine-free zone. Roughing out the neck is going to require a visit to my friend Matt, who has a nicely equipped woodshop. I’ll use Matt’s band saw to rough out the shape of the neck. The first step is making sure that the blade and saw table are square.

Matt’s using his chop saw to cut the correct angle at the top of the headstock. This is much easier to do while the wood is still square.

I cut the side profile first.

Second cut.

We’re using a wider band saw blade to reduce wandering and keep our cuts nice and straight. Wider band saw blades are not great at tight curves. So, going slowly, I remove wood in the curve bite by bite. I prefer to rely on hand tools for the rest of the shaping.

Once I’ve finished cutting out the side profile, I stick my front profile back in place. I make the headstock level by resting the neck on a block of scrap wood to cut out the front profile.

Band-sawing finished, it’s time to thank Matt and return to my own quiet shop.

Side view.

My neck stock was not quite wide enough to make the complete headstock, so I’ll need to add some wings to it. This is a little scrap of wood left over from a project I started when I was a teen—about 45 years ago. In my first attempt at instrument building, I tried to make an electric guitar neck. It would have been beautiful, if I only had the skills to finish it. I’m just interested in those little bits of mahogany on the edges, so I rip this piece down the middle to start.

This piece of medium-density fiberboard (MDF) will make a nice flat surface for gluing and sanding. The wax paper will keep the glue from damaging the work surface.

I peel off my pattern and set it aside for this next step. I’m using a shop level to prop up the neck so that the headstock lies flat while I position the wings.

The pencil mark will help me keep these parts aligned when I clamp them together.

Glue all surfaces, spread the glue, and allow them to sit for a minute.

I place clamps along the length of the wings.

Front view.

I’m going to sand the front of my headstock flat by using a double row of this 80-grit self-stick sandpaper stuck on my super-flat medium-density fiberboard.

I use steady, even pressure, being careful not to rock the workpiece, especially at the beginning and end of each stroke.

I check my progress frequently. The process moves quickly with this coarse sandpaper. I’m being very careful to respect the nut position lines. I don’t want to sand past them.

Once the front surface is even, I reapply my pattern.

Clamping the workpiece to my bench hook, I once again reach to my backsaw to cut the sides of the headstock.

Both sides removed.

I rough in these curves with a coping saw . . .

. . . and finish the shaping with my four-in-hand.

I’m using a screw starter to mark the center of each tuner hole. This hole will serve as a pilot for the drill bit.

I mark the center of the neck along the back as a guide for shaping. I’ve also run a pencil mark about an eighth of an inch (3mm) from the edge on each side. I’ll be careful while removing wood not to cut past these lines.

My tool of choice for shaping next is a spoke shave, and if you don’t have one, I think you should try to find one. This one is called a cigar spoke shave. You can also do this shaping with a rasp or file.

Note that my cuts go up to but not beyond the pencil mark.

Again, here on the sides, I’m closing in on the pencil mark, but I won’t cross that line.

To finish out this curve, I’m going to use a half-round rasp, a round rasp, and a half-round file.

Removing some of the big stuff.

Refining the curve.

Smoothing off the rasp marks with a file.

I’ve marked the centerline on the base of the neck. I’ll use this line as a guide for drilling dowel holes.

Now I’ve drawn guides that I’ll use to cut out the basic shape.

I’ll be using half-inch (13mm) fluted dowels to join the neck to the body. These provide maximum side-grain contact for the glue, which doesn’t hold as well to end-grain, such as the bottom surface of the neck.

I’ve marked the dowel at its middle, and I’m using a bit of masking tape as a depth stop for my drill bit.

I use an awl to make pilot holes for drilling.

I chuck my half-inch (13mm) bit in a variable-speed drill to reduce the risk of drilling too far. All the same, on my second hole I manage to bore all the way through. Perhaps I should have said “eliminate” the risk rather than “reduce.” Ah well. All I’ve really done is make an opportunity to get creative later. Stay tuned.

Holes drilled, I’ll mark the position on the box next before moving on to shaping the base of the neck.

I use these half-inch (13mm) dowel centering pins to mark the box for drilling. The pins create pilot holes spaced and aligned with my existing holes.

It’s also essential to have a flat surface. My bench is so old and well used that I don’t trust its flatness, so I have once again pulled out my sheet of half-inch (13mm) MDF. The pins fit snugly into the half-inch (13mm) holes.

Both pins in place.

I’ve marked my centerline on the top of the box . . .

. . . and used a square to extend the centerline on the base of the neck around to the back. Making sure the two centerlines match up and that both the neck and the box lie flat on the work surface, I gently press the pins into the box.

I’ll use these holes as guides when I come back to drill the box.

I use my backsaw to rough in the final shape of the neck’s base.

I’m being careful here not to push too hard or accidentally twist the saw, which could result in splitting off the end of the cut. Hand saw pressure should be almost entirely back and forth, letting the weight of the saw apply the downward pressure.

I cut wide of my layout marks to allow for removing them, and for final shaping and smoothing.

I remove saw marks and wood to reach my guideline.

Shaping up.

Once again, I use my cigar spokeshave for a little final shaping . . .

. . . then the four-in-hand to round off the back.

I got this roll of cloth-backed abrasive at a garage sale a long time ago, and it seems to be endless. I was lucky enough to find it in two different grades.

This stuff is really great for shaping and sanding curves.

A little more sanding and finishing on the headstock, and the neck will be ready to attach to the box.

Using the marks I made with the dowel pins as my guide, I carefully drill two half-inch (13mm) holes into the top of the box.

I install the dowels to check the fit of the neck to the box.

With the neck in place, I use my straightedge to see if the front of the box and the front of the neck are perfectly parallel. They are not.

I use my machinist’s square to determine that the front and base of the neck are perfectly square.

The box is a different story. The front and top are not at 90°.

I use a block plane and some coarse sandpaper to bring the top into square.

I made a sanding block using self-adhesive sandpaper on a small block of flat hardwood.

The sandpaper cuts more slowly than my plane, so I use it for the last bit of truing up, then go to finer sandpaper to finish the surface. Now I’ll set the neck aside and work on the fretboard.

Making the Fretboard

Fretboard material.

It’s a little under 2" (5cm) wide . . .

. . . and about 5/16" (79mm) thick.

Just wide enough to fit my pattern, with a little left over for sanding.

I start by cutting it to length.

I cut out the pattern. I had mine printed on adhesive-backed vinyl.

Make sure the top end of the fretboard is perfectly square. This is where the nut will butt up against it.

For some preliminary sanding I use a wide, flat board that I know to be perfectly flat. I have a piece of eighty-grit self-adhesive sandpaper stuck to the board, creating a giant sanding block. I use a lot of this coarse, adhesive-backed sandpaper for making things flat.

I align the pattern with the edge of my fretboard. The space at the top represents the nut, so in order to ensure that the fret spacing is correct, relative to the nut, I’m careful to use the correct line.

I carefully center the template.

Once it’s in place, I tape it down to hold its position . . .

. . . and then remove the backing paper to stick it in place.

Lining the fretboard up with my neck blank, I hold it in position against the body.

This fretboard pattern is a little longer than I need, so I am not going to be using all of the frets.

I use my marking knife and square to nick the edge of the fretboard at each fret position.

I’ll also trace the long sides of the pattern onto the fretboard with a pencil.

I remove the pattern and use the square and marking knife to extend the line of each fret line across the width of the fretboard. Once again, I start by setting the marking knife into my nick and then sliding the square up against it for perfect alignment.

Here you see all of the fret positions marked and my pencil lines indicating the taper.

I’m using my bench hook to support the fretboard while I cut slots that the wire frets will fit into. I’m using a fretting saw with an adjustable depth gauge. I practiced this several times on the offcut and on my original board. It only takes one or two passes with the saw to reach the correct depth.

You don’t have to use a saw with a depth gauge. I have made fretboards using saws without a gauge many times. Once you practice cutting slots and setting frets on a scrap a few times, you’ll have a pretty good feel for how many strokes it takes to reach the correct depth.

This is the fretboard with all of the slots cut. When I started this project, I was not at all sure how I was going to taper the board without a table saw, but I think I’ve figured it out.

I decide to do it with a hand plane. Checking edges for straightness, I select two narrow boards to use as a depth stop, and place my fretboard in between them with the edges lined up with my fretboard’s edge line. I use some carpet tape on the back of the fretboard to help secure it in place.

I secure that sandwich in the face vise . . .

. . . then remove the excess wood with a sharp plane, taking small bites and checking frequently to make sure the workpiece has not moved.

The sandwich guide boards give a clear indication of when it’s time to stop.

Repeat for the other edge.

You can get fret wire from any number of luthier supply companies. I think I ordered mine from Stewart-MacDonald. I got the smallest gauge available, the one suggested for ukuleles.

I lay the fret wire into the slot like this, leaving a little bit protruding out the opposite side. I use my rawhide mallet to tap and press it into place.

A pair of flush nippers are pretty much indispensable if you’re building fretted instruments. With the fret securely seated, I use the nippers to cut each fret flush with the edge of the fretboard.

All the frets are in place and ready for trimming.

Trim both ends of each fret flush with the fretboard.

Carefully collect all of your trimmings and dispose of them. They are hard and sharp and, left lying on a work surface, can undo hours of finish work in an instant.

The next step is to file the fret ends and shape the edge of the fretboard. You’ll need to secure the fretboard to do this. If you don’t have a bench with dogs like this, you can also secure the fretboard to the edge of your work surface with carpet tape.

I do this step with a common file, but it is very difficult to do cleanly, especially since the wood is so much softer than the metal. This is another point where I recommend making a small investment in a fret end-beveling file.

The end-beveling file is just a bit of file secured in a hardwood block at the perfect angle.

Beveling the fret ends.

So far, I have only been cutting metal. I want to take this all the way down until the edge of the fretboard is beveled as well. Leaving this little bit of wire protruding would make for painful playing.

Stop when you get to the bottom of the fret wire.

I’m going to apply a coat of tung oil to the fretboard now. The oil will cause the wood fibers to swell and help to lock the frets in place. It will also harden the wood and keep it from absorbing dirt and oil from my hands.

I don’t want any oil on the surface that I’ll be gluing to the neck, so I mask that off with painter’s tape.

Using a scrap from a retired T-shirt, I rub the oil into the surface . . .

. . . and the edges. Tung oil is easy to work with. You spread it on, wait 15 or 20 minutes, rub off any excess with a soft cloth, then set it aside for 24 hours to cure.

My fretboard is finished except for position markers.

These little dots will be my fret position markers. I make mine using a ¼" (6mm) paper punch and a piece of veneer or an old guitar pick. You’ll also need a ¼" (6mm) Forstner bit. Forstner bits make flat-bottomed holes. I’ll be placing dots at frets 3, 5, and 7.

The scrap of wood was actually packaging I found inside an antique cigar box.

I punch out a lot of dots, and then select three suited for my uke.

Plenty of dots for future projects.

The veneer dots are so thin, and the fretboard so soft, that I don’t even chuck my bit into a drill…

. . . opting instead to use gentle pressure and twist it by hand.

Finished hole.

A tiny drop of wood glue applied with a matchstick will secure the dot.

I use the back end of my bit to press the marker into place.

Position marker in place!

Finished position markers at frets 3, 5, and 7.

One of my dots seats a bit high, so I sand it flush and apply another drop of tung oil.

Joining the Neck to the Box

Things start to get exciting here as the future instrument assumes its final shape. Once the neck is glued in place, I’ll know what the instrument will feel like in my hands.

With the neck in place, I trace the base with a pencil and then mask off the exposed surface with painters tape.

It’s important to coat the sides of the dowels and the sides of the holes with glue. The end grain isn’t as important. Press the dowels into the holes, tapping gently with a light mallet if necessary.

Apply glue to the neck side of the joint. Once again, the sides of the holes is where the action is, so don’t skimp in there.

After pressing the neck gently into place on the box and wiping away excess glue, I place the assembly facedown on a piece of MDF covered with waxed paper and apply gentle clamping pressure. I allow the glued joint to cure overnight before moving forward.

Using wooden bench dogs protects the soft wood. If your workbench doesn’t have dogs, work your clamping technique out carefully and thoroughly before you open your glue bottle.

Gluing the Fretboard into Place

I carefully align the top of the fretboard with the nut placement mark and, holding it firmly, I make a pencil line on the front of the box.

I use this line as a guide to mask off the body, in order to protect it from any glue squeezed out.

I also mask off the surface that I will be gluing the nut to.

Carefully spread just enough glue around to cover the entire surface of the neck and fretboard. Let the glue soak in for a minute before putting them together.

I’m careful to align the top of the fretboard with the nut line. When everything is in place, I clamp the fretboard to the neck and body and set it aside to dry.

Here I use a coarse file to bring the edge of the neck flush with the edge of the fretboard. I’m being careful not to remove any wood from the fretboard or dislodge any frets.

Mounting the Tuners

You can get a set of inexpensive, short-shafted ukulele tuners (also called tuning machines) from any number of suppliers. I bought mine from CB Gitty Crafters Supplies.

I use this drill gauge to determine the diameter of hole I need to drill, to seat the tuners.

The tuners fit nicely into the " (9.92mm) hole in my gauge, so I use a " (9.92mm) drill to make the tuner holes in my headstock.

I’m using a drill press to drill the holes for seating the tuners. I use a block of wood underneath the headstock to prevent tear-out, and I adjust the height of the table until the headstock is square to the bit.

I usually center the bit over the pilot hole with the drill press turned off, then I switch it on, proceeding slowly, and making sure the bit remains lined up with the pilot hole.

I like to clean up drill holes with a hand-powered countersink.

A nice set of closed-gear ukulele tuners can be surprisingly inexpensive. Tuners made specifically for the uke have shorter shafts because ukulele headstocks are thinner than guitar headstocks, everything shrunk to ukulele scale.

Each tuner comprises four separate parts: the tuning mechanism itself; a washer; a locking collar; and a mounting screw.

I insert all the tuners so that I can mark the position of the mounting screws.

I will predrill pilot holes for these tiny mounting screws.

Holes drilled! This seems like an excellent time to sand everything and put a coat of tung oil on the neck.

With all my drilling finished, I go over all of the surfaces with three grades of sandpaper. After wiping away the sanding dust, I mask off the body and apply a single coat of tung oil to the neck and headstock. I use a single coat of tung oil, which I allow to dry overnight.

With the tuners seated in place, the washer goes on first. This washer gives the locking collar some grip, while also protecting the wood of your headstock from both the turning collar and your wrench.

I slip the locking collar into place and finger-tighten it.

The mounting screw prevents the tuner from turning in its hole. Drive it all the way in before you use a wrench to tighten the locking collar.

Finally, I use a small adjustable wrench to tighten the locking collar and firmly lock the tuner in place.

Making a Bone Nut

In building cigar box guitars, I’ve used any variety of materials to create the nut. These have ranged from bolts to scrap pieces of oak and rosewood, and even some water buffalo horn. This will be my first time using bone, a material preferred by builders of fine instruments.

I’m starting out with a pre-dimensioned bone nut blank. I have had this for so long I don’t recall where I got it. It doesn’t pay to skimp on this critical piece. For all the hours I’ll put into making my ukulele, I want it to sound as sweet as possible.

Nut blanks are readily available online or from your friendly neighborhood luthier, but I have also seen them on luthier suppliers’ websites and, of course, on eBay.

Blanks are usually " (0.5cm) thick and " (1cm) tall, and they come in assorted lengths.

This is a hand vise I found at a garage sale, and I’m glad I did. I’m not sure what I would do without it. These are indispensable when working with or handling small parts. If you can’t find one at a garage or estate sale, look to a jewelry supplier.

With the blank securely clamped in my vise, I begin shaping it with a piece of self-adhesive sandpaper affixed to a flat surface. I try several blocks of wood alongside of this sanding surface until I create the angle I want.

Here I’ve reduced the width of the edge that will come into contact with the strings.

I mark the position of the strings by first marking the overall length to match the neck, allowing ⅛" (3mm) at each end, and then dividing the remaining space by 3, leaving me ⅜" (9mm) between strings. The plans I bought called for the strings to be " (10mm) apart, so I’m pretty close to home.

I look at a set of concert ukulele strings that I bought for this project to determine the gauge for my string slots.

I’ll be using nut files I borrowed from my nephew Michael, proving once again that you don’t have to own all the tools. The gauges match my strings almost perfectly, except the heaviest string.

Start out slow and only take a few strokes at a time when you’re filing the nut slots. Keep the strings you plan to use handy and test the slots frequently for depth by laying the correct string into the nut slot. You want the strings sunk to at least half their diameter, more for the tinier strings. I create the largest slot (0.04" [1mm]) using the 0.035" (0.9mm) file by first creating a 0.035" (0.9mm) slot, then using the file again to take a little off one side of the slot.

The finished slots. I clean up the burs with some fine sandpaper.

I mark the blank for cutting it to length. I use my smallest backsaw to cut the bone.

I prop a file on my bench to clean up the cut edges and round off the corners. With pieces this small, it’s sometimes easier to bring the workpiece to the tool rather than the other way around.

The finished nut is ready to be glued in place.

Using a razor blade, I carefully clean away excess glue from the top end of the fretboard.

Check the nut for fit. It should fit flush against both the neck and the fretboard.

Use two or three drops of cyanoacrylate glue to cement the nut in place. I choose cyanoacrylate because wood glue relies on the porosity of wood for hold, and bone is not very porous. Polyurethane glues swell as they cure, which could move the nut away from the fretboard.

Making the Bridge and Saddle

I recently looked to my original Cigar Box Guitars book for some information, and I noticed that I had misnamed the bridge and saddle in that publication. To me, the bridge looked more like a horse saddle than the saddle does, but that’s not correct. The bridge is the wooden piece that mounts to the soundboard and supports the saddle, which is the narrow piece of bone that comes into direct contact with the strings. Live and learn.

I’m using my 1950s-era baritone ukulele as inspiration for my concert ukulele bridge.

I ordered this guitar bridge blank through the Stewart-MacDonald website, www.stewmac.com. This blank of Brazilian rosewood measures 7" x 2" x ½" (17.8 x 5 x 1.3cm) You don’t have to use Brazilian rosewood; any dense, durable wood will do the job.

The bridge blank’s a little thicker than I need, so I will rip it down to ⅜" (9.5mm) It’s also about twice as wide as I need, which will work out well, as you’ll see.

If you have a great band saw and you know how to use it to resaw small boards, that’s another option for thicknessing the blank.

We have chucked an ⅛" (3.2mm) straight bit into the router table and positioned the cutter about " (2.4mm) from the fence. These dimensions don’t need to be absolutely precise, although the depth of the cut here is important.

After testing the cutter several times with scrap wood, I’m ready to run the rosewood over the router.

This first slot will accept the ⅛" (3.2mm) bone saddle.

I bring the bone channel saddle blank along and test the fit, which is perfect.

Turning the blank around, I run it over the router a second time. I’m actually making two bridges at once.

I am using a ¼" (0.6cm) round bit for the second cut.

The fence is about ½" (1.3cm) from the cutter this time.

Looking good. Everything’s clean.

Now I run it back through to groove the other side.

My routing work is finished.

This is the finished profile of two bridges, back to back.

I run a couple of other pieces of hard, exotic woods through the router table as well. Setting up machinery, making the necessary adjustments, and cleaning up all take so much time, it’s a good idea to make as much use of that setup time as possible. I’m all set for ukulele bridges for a while.

Now I use the table saw to rip the two bridges apart.

My bari’s bridge is 4½" (11.5cm) long. Since my uke is smaller, I’m making my bridge a little shorter than this one.

I decide to round the back edge of the saddle support to give the strings a little more clearance. First, I remove wood using a finger plane (a small rasp would work, too).

Then I finish rounding with a file and some sandpaper.

This is just the look I am going for.

The next step is to cut the bridge to length.

I use my marking knife to indicate the beginning of the end scallops.

The cut makes a nice starting reference for my big (1¾" [4.5cm]) chisel, which falls right in.

Here the scalloped shape has been roughed in with the chisel.

I wrap some sandpaper around a short length of hardwood dowel to finish the shaping.

My new ukulele bridge, with saddle in place.

Old and new.

Future home.

I stretched a string from the tuner to the bridge to check the height. The bridge itself is a bit too high, so It’s back to the 80-grit sanding station for final thicknessing.

Once the bridge is the correct thickness, I mask the bottom gluing surface and rub the top down with some tung oil.

The fret spacing is based on a 15" (38cm) scale, so it’s critical that the saddle be positioned exactly 15" (38cm) from the nut. I butt a steel rule against the nut along one side of the neck and make a mark at 15" (38cm).

Then I butt the rule against the other side of the neck, again placing a mark at 15" (38cm). I’ll connect these two lines to determine the exact position of the saddle, which will determine the position of the bridge.

I had been wrestling with the question of how to clamp the bridge into place without buying an expensive, single-purpose bridge clamp. I recalled that when I first took my baritone ukulele to my friends at Guitar Works (the back had split along its entire length), they showed me how to make a clamp using a guitar tuner and a discarded guitar string. I used several of these at the time to clamp cleats to the inside of the back to hold them fast while the glue cured.

To improvise a clamp, I use a wood scrap measuring 1 ½" (3.8cm) x 1 ½" (3.8cm) x the length of the bridge, two guitar tuners with mounting screws, and two discarded guitar strings.

I mark centerlines on two sides, and a line indicating where the bridge will make contact with the clamp.

Drill ¼" (6mm) holes about an inch and a half (3.8cm) in from the ends of the bridge.

I drill ½" (13mm) holes at 90° to the ¼" (6mm) hole, then attach the guitar tuners through the ¼" (6mm) holes. The tuner shafts and string holes should be visible through the larger holes.

The tuner shafts ended up about 2" (5cm) apart.

I’m drilling two corresponding " (1.6mm) holes 2" (5cm) apart through the bridge at the bottom of the saddle slot. These holes will be invisible when the saddle is in place.

I’m using painter’s tape to extend the saddle position line out beyond the bridge without marking the box. I center the bridge, line the saddle slot up with the position lines, and use an awl to mark the position of the holes.

Now I drill two " (1.6mm) holes throughout the box.

I cut two clamping pads from a scrap piece of—what else?—cigar box packaging, then drill " (1.6mm) holes through each. These will prevent the brass end-bead from eating into (or worse, pulling through) the soft cedar top when I apply clamping pressure.

I use a long, skinny, angled pair of needle-nose pliers to thread the end of the guitar strings up through the inside of the body.

Then I thread the guitar strings up through the bottom of the bridge and tape the bridge securely in place. In order to correctly locate the string anchor holes in the bridge, I install a ukulele string in the first position and stretch it so that the string maintains the same distance from the edge of the fretboard.

Using the string as a guide, I use a pencil to mark the position of the string anchor hole. I then repeat the process for the string in the other outside position.

I use the marks I’ve made to make pilot holes. Then I measure the distance between the two holes and divide by three to determine the distance from each outside string to its inside neighbor.

I drill ⅛" (1.6mm) holes at each string location.

Once again, I’ve used painter’s tape to protect the soundboard from glue that might squeeze out. Before applying glue to the rosewood, I wiped the surface with alcohol to dry out some of the wood’s natural oils. This will allow the glue to soak in better. With the clamping strings in place, I’ve applied a light coating of glue to each surface and spread the glue around.

Now I thread the guitar strings up through the tuning pegs with the tuning knobs facing up.

I turn the tuning peg to draw the bead on the inside of the body up against the soundboard. As the string tightens, it draws the block down against the bridge, which is now clamped tight to the body. Before final tightening, make sure the bridge hasn’t moved, as mine has here. Reposition as necessary, then set it aside to allow the glue to cure.

It’s a good idea to remove the masking tape before the glue dries (don’t ask me how I know this). Once the glue has set, you can loosen the tuners and pull the guitar strings with their gluing pads back out through the sound hole.

Bridge in place.

Finish and Final Assembly

This is where it all comes together. Using the ukulele strings as a guide, I’ve determined that my saddle is about twice as tall as it needs to be. I clamped it into a bench vise and slowly worked it down to the right height with a file, taking a little at a time and frequently checking it with the saddle in place against the strings.

Once I achieve the correct height, I smooth the contact surface with fine sandpaper and install it into the bridge.

Shellac comes in different shades and is non-toxic, inexpensive, and easy to use. I plan to finish the body with a dark shellac. You can buy shellac in flake form and mix it yourself in small batches. This reduces waste. Unlike premixed finishes that come in cans, the flakes will keep indefinitely, ready for your next project.

I start with about ½" (1.3cm) of flakes in a small salsa jar.

Making sure I have adequate ventilation, I pour in denatured alcohol to about twice the level of the flakes.

Replacing the jar lid, I swirl the alcohol and flakes until all the flakes dissolve. This can take a little while. I usually move on to other things with the jar on my bench. Seeing it there reminds me to give the jar a swirl every so often.

I make a shellac applicator using a scrap from an old cotton T-shirt, some cotton I scavenged from a vitamin bottle, and a rubber band.

Dip the applicator into the shellac and rub it into the wood, moving along the direction of the grain. Cover evenly, watching carefully for drips and runs. Each coat will dry in less than an hour, and you can apply as many as you like.

If you like a glossy finish, there’s a good article on the Stewart-MacDonald website on French polishing with shellac. I’m anxious to start playing my new instrument, and I prefer a dull finish anyway, so I apply two coats and then even the finish out with some ultra-fine (0000) steel wool. I follow the steel wool with a tacky cloth to remove any dust.

Oh, and about that time I drilled the dowel hole clear through the base of the neck? Let’s fix that. With a ½" (12mm) plug cutter that I bought at a hardware store, I make a mahogany plug to fill that hole. Then, with the plug glued in place and the shaping and sanding done to make it flush, I attach a strap button.

The button not only hides my mistake, it’s also useful. Straps are rarely used with soprano- and concert-sized instruments, but mine is a little heavier than most and I want to have the option.

Attaching the Strings

Tie each string in place at the bridge first, using a simple twist, then attach the opposite end to the tuning peg by wrapping it several times from the center out, then poking it through the hole above the wraps.

If you play a stringed instrument, you already know that new strings take a while to settle as they stretch into their final position. Nylon strings seem to take forever to really settle in, so don’t be discouraged if you have to retune your instrument every time you pick it up for the first few weeks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo by Marc Hauser.

During his three decades as a professional photographer, David Sutton has always managed to steal time for handiwork. Whether restoring old hand tools, carving wood, making jewelry, or, of course, building cigar box guitars, he has always found something valuable in working with his hands that couldn’t be replaced by his more practical pursuits. Coming from a long line of teachers and tradesmen, perhaps it was inevitable that David would write a book showing people how to build something.

So it was that his first book, Cigar Box Guitars, appeared in 2012 to wide acclaim. His years of research on the topic introduced him to and incorporated him into the stimulating world of cigar box guitars, a world rich with art, music, community and meaning.

What better person than this gifted photographer to write a book about the beauty of cigar box guitars, and the passion—the obsession—builders and players feel for their craft, their instruments, and their culture? David is a keen observer who uses his talents as a photographer to document the guitars; he’s a reporter who has studied and greatly respects the roots of the craft; and he is a builder who has himself successfully built many guitars. David’s even a player who loves to sing along with his strumming.

In his other life, David operates Sutton Studios, a high-end portrait studio in Evanston, Illinois. He specializes in an artful and humorous approach to photographic portraits of people with their pets. He thinks of it as relationship portraiture (suttonstudios.com).

David also enjoys Sutton Studios’ charitable efforts, which have helped raise over a million dollars for dozens of animal and human welfare organizations over the past twenty-five years.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the following artists for their time, their dedication to the craft, and their willingness to share their work by contributing to this book. The growing, thriving world of cigar box guitars is truly the result of the efforts of people like these.

United States

David Williams, aka One String Willie. David Williams has been learning to play guitar since his fifteenth birthday. He discovered cigar box guitars in 2004, made his first diddley bow in 2006, and made his first public appearance as One String Willie in 2007. The diddley bow has been his main instrument since that time, and he continues to enjoy teaching himself to play it. A research scientist, he works in Bethesda, Maryland, and lives with his wife, Miz Charlotte, and their herd of cats in Tylersport, Pennsylvania. onestringwillie.com

Diane Sutliff. Diane Sutliff wants everybody to make music, and she designs and builds instruments to make music making more accessible to the non-musically inclined. She lives in Chicago and teaches art to students in the Chicago Public Schools. She has small hands. chicagocbg.blogspot.com

John Lowe. From the back room of his Memphis, Tennessee, store, Xanadu Music and Books, innovator John Lowe designs and builds musical instruments, many built around cigar boxes. He likes oak dowels, his own hand-wound pickups, and feedback. Lowe also steps out musically as a one-man band. myspace.com/johnnylowebow

Kevin Kraft. Kevin Kraft lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where he is the driving force behind the annual Kansas City Cigar Box Guitar Festival. Kraft also gives inspirational talks around the construction of a diddley bow. kevinmkraft.weebly.com

Mike Orr. Mike Orr is a professional carpenter and owner of Built2Last Guitars. He has designed, built, and sold hundreds of instruments. The highlight of his career was when guitar legend Robert Randolph played one of his guitars in front of a live audience. When he is not in the shop, Mike can usually be found touring the music festival circuit in his VW van, where he demonstrates and leads classes on building cigar box guitars. built2lastcigarboxguitars.webs.com

Shane Speal. Shane Speal lives and works in York, Pennsylvania. He’s a full-time cigar box guitar professional, performing constantly, building and innovating daily. He’s also a spirited advocate for this humble instrument and for anyone interested in finding his or her own voice. Read about Speal in the introduction to this book and in Cigar Box Guitars, also by this author/publisher. shanespeal.com

Shawn Denman. Shawn Denman, a “small town boy” living in the big city of Chicago, rocks the steampunk and still feels the magic every time he strings a new guitar and hears its music for the first time. facebook.com/shawn.denman

Bill Jehle. Alabama native Bill Jehle wanted to build the perfect electric guitar for recording his music. His quest led him, instead, to making cigar box guitars from junk. Now fronting his cigar-box-guitar-based Nadaband from Decatur, Alabama, Jehle thinks having 100 strange-looking instruments—his Cigar Box Guitar Museum collection—and too many gigs is far better than having one perfect guitar and no career. bellyjellymusic.com

Glenn Kaiser. Glenn Kaiser is a Chicago-based blues musician, singer-songwriter, and pastor. With Rez Band, Glenn Kaiser Band, and solo projects, he has recorded 40 full-length albums to date. Cigar box and found-object guitars have lately become his passion. grrrrecords.com/glennkaiser.cfm

Josh Gayou. Josh Gayou operates Smokehouse Guitars, a small, one-man custom guitar shop in Lake Elsinore, California. Josh was first bitten by the CBG bug in 2008, and has been making custom guitars for musicians and enthusiasts since. smokehouseguitars.com

Ted Crocker. Ted Crocker hosts the Handmade Music Clubhouse social network (handmademusicclubhouse.com), where he’s been helping people online, on the phone, and in person daily since 2003. Crocker created guitars for the Danny Glover movie Honeydripper, and Keith Urban currently plays a Crocker onstage. Crocker’s hand-crafted pickups are in thousands of cigar box and custom guitars worldwide. tedcrocker.com

Al Hamilton. Al Hamilton enjoys having people ask him where he got the guitar he’s playing, because he gets to answer, “I didn’t buy it, I built it.” Originally inspired by one of Shane Speal’s videos, Hamilton has built over 300 guitars in his Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania, shop. facebook.com/al.hamilton.520

Darren Brown. Darren Brown calls the seaside village of Canning, Nova Scotia, home. He has worked as a carpenter and finish carpenter for thirty years, and he’s been playing and repairing guitars for just as long. Darren was bitten by the cigar box guitar bug in about 2001. dbrowncustoms.blogspot.com

Kurt Schoen. Retired Air Force pilot Kurt Schoen lives in Walla Walla, Washington. He has background in drawing, painting, aircraft tooling, and manufacture and aeronautical engineering, and he has a day job flying cargo planes. Schoen started building cigar box guitars in 2001 to entertain his then-small children. He now builds a wide variety of stringed instruments. schoenguitars.com

Lloyd “MadMan” Madansky. Lloyd “MadMan” Madansky has been making cigar box guitars since 2003. He builds them in his home workshop in Arroyo Grande, California, and sells them locally at art fairs and music festivals. He also conducts workshops on building CBGs for kids of all ages. cigarboxnation.com/profile/LloydMadManMadansky

Michael Ballerini. Michael Ballerini lives just outside Detroit in Clawson, Michigan, and says that building cigar box guitars calms him right down. When he’s not building cigar box guitars, he can be found selling them (his, and some built by others!) on weekends at the Rust Belt Marketplace in Ferndale, Michigan.

Paul “Uncle Pauly” Bessette. Paul Bessette, award-winning tattoo artist and purveyor of Uncle Pauly’s Boxes, grew up on Long Island, on or near the water pretty much all the time. He sings sea shanties. He got into cigar box guitars because he wanted to accompany his own singing and found six strings unmanageable. He’s been a percussionist for over four decades. He thinks everyone should sing. unclepaulyart.com

Matty Baratto. Hollywood is home for Matty Baratto, who has been a professional luthier since 1993. He started building cigar box guitars in 1994, and his Cigfiddles have been seen in the hands of such luminaries as Paul McCartney, Johnny Depp, and Steven Tyler.

Baratto has made over 250 cigar box guitars and he’s proud to point out that his Cigfiddles can also be heard on several records: Alain Johannes’ “Spark,” PJ Harvey’s “White Chalk,” and Brody Dalle’s “Spinnerette,” to name a few.

Baratto is living his dream, and if you have one, he thinks you should live yours, too. barattoguitars.com

Peter Seman. Peter Seman played fiddle professionally with bluegrass and Texas swing bands for 10 years in Buffalo, New York, before moving to Chicago to attend the Chicago School of Violin Making, from which he graduated in 1988. He now operates Seman Violins in Skokie, Illinois, where he’s currently working on violins patterned after Stradivari and Guarneri, and cellos and violas patterned after Stradivari. semanviolins.com

Jeremiah Lee. With a background in metal smithing and fine woodworking, Jeremiah Lee builds guitars inspired by Depression-era art and design movements. He lives and works in Chicago, a city with a handful of exceptional CBG builders and a tremendous DIY spirit. Lee loves the history of the CBG, and he’s a terrible musician.

John Nickel. John Nickel hails from Florence, Alabama, home of the W.C. Handy Blues Festival. He saw Microwave Dave Gallaher playing a cigar box guitar at the Handy, and immediately knew where he was headed. Well, sort of. Whether he knew he’d soon be operating what he calls the world’s first cigar box guitar store (Nickel CBGs) out of a repurposed shoe mill in Huntsville, Alabama, is open to debate, but that’s where you’ll find him.

Kimmer Olesak. Kimmer Olesak spent many good hours in detention at Jack Benny Jr. High School in Waukegan, Illinois. So it seemed fitting that they should appoint the class clown to be Jack Benny’s guide on one of the comedian’s visits to his hometown. Today Olesak (better known as KimmerO) works as a cameraman, shooting for television and film. He says he’s a big fan of cigar box guitars as folk art, and he is so moved that other people can actually produce music from the instruments he builds from discarded materials that he often just gives them away. cigarboxnation.com/profile/KimmerOlesak

Cambridge, UK

Belinda Gent. Singer/songwriter Belinda Gent bought her first cigar box guitar on eBay, but she quickly went on to making her own instruments, crafting her own songs, and performing them in public. A devoted street musician, she’s been out busking nearly every week for the past eight years. Since that first cigar box guitar, she’s built all manner of off-beat string instruments and amplifiers, and she’s recorded two EPs, five albums, and two live-track albums, recorded while busking in 2015. bemuzic.bandcamp.com

Weilmünster, Germany

Friedel Geratsch. Born in the coal and steel metropolis of Essen, Friedel Geratsch started writing his own songs and performing on street corners when he was 25. He played in several bands before forming Geier Sturzflug, which produced a number of hits, some of which helped define the German New Wave (Neue Deutsche Welle). After riding the wave of Geier Sturzflug’s popularity for a quarter of a century, he reinvented himself by devoting a year to learning to build and play cigar box guitars. He returned to the stage with a CBG-based trio he called Garage 3, with which he released two CDs. Friedel then reinvented himself again, performing now as a one-man-band. As Cigar Box Gery, he surrounds himself with amplifiers, speakers, and a bass drum, all crafted from old Samsonite Suitcases. garage-3.de

Moscow, Russia

Evgeny Nemov, aka Captain Nemov. Born in Murmansk, Evgeny Nemov cut his musical teeth learning prison songs from his cousin, a St. Petersburg prison warden. He began performing music on a double-bass balalaika at age eleven in a Russian folk orchestra, and toured with that group for eight years, doubling on drums. His sister’s boyfriend introduced him to American blues and rock and roll, and so he moved on to guitar, studying many styles of music—country, swing, reggae, classical, and folk. Discovering cigar box guitars on the Internet changed Evgeny’s professional direction. He now regularly performs his own “Blues from a Cigar Box” project in Moscow clubs, and has written and recorded a number of original compositions, tailored to the unique sound of the cigar box guitar. cigarboxguitars.ru

Montreal, Canada

Lenny Piroth-Robert. Montreal artist and entrepreneur Lenny Piroth-Robert still makes cigar box guitars, but he’s moved away from larger-scale production. He now devotes most of his work time to the creation of one-of-a-kind, custom six-string electric guitars for a growing roster of discerning musicians. When he’s not crafting guitars at Montreal’s Mile End Guitar Co-op, he likes to spend his creative time in front of a canvas at his home painting studio. daddy-mojo.com

Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil

José Cechin. Originally trained as a dental technician, José Cechin began learning marquetry, wood carving, and pyrography as a hobby, but soon realized it was to be more of a calling. He built a cigar box guitar to cheer up a friend, and fell in love with the process, as well as the end product. He left the dental lab and never looked back. Now he operates as Coyote Guitars and performs locally as a street musician. facebook.com/cboxguitar/

INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below

B

Baker, Rob “Hitone”

Ballerini, Michael

banjos

Baratto, Matty

Barnard, Tim

bass guitars

Beard, Daniel Carter

Benson, George

Bessette, Paul “Uncle Pauly”

board-on-box construction/design

Broonzy, Big Bill

Brown, Darren

C

cigar boxes

cigar box fiddles

Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza

Cigar Box Guitar Festival

cigar box guitars

about

decline in popularity of

history of

resurging interest in

what is a cigar box guitar

Cigar Box Nation

cigar box ukuleles. See also ukuleles

cigar box ukuleles, building

attaching the strings

finish and final assembly

getting the body ready

gluing the fretboard into place

joining the neck to the box

making a bone nut

making the bridge and saddle

making the fretboard

making the neck

mounting the tuners

cigar box violins

Clark, Roy

Collins, Albert

Crocker, Ted

D

Daddy Mojo. See Piroth-Robert, Lenny (Daddy Mojo)

Davis, Reverend Gary

Denman, Shawn

diddley bows

Dukes, Darren

dulcimers

E

Estes, Sleepy John

F

fiddles. See cigar box

fiddle Fields, W.C.

Fine, Larry

G

Gallaher, Microwave Dave

Gayou, Josh

Godfrey, Arthur

H

Hamilton, Al

hand tools

Hartwell, Tomi-O

Hendrix, Jimi

Holiday Music Festival

Hopkins, Amy

Hopkins, Lightnin’

Hostetter, Jeff

J

Jehle, Bill

Jehle, Bill, collection pieces

Johnson, Blind Willie

Johnson, Justin

Johnson, Robert

Johnston, Richard

K

Kaiser, Glenn

Kraft, Kevin

L

lap guitars

Lee, Jeremiah

Lockwood, Robert, Jr.

Lowe, John (Johnny Lowebow)

Lowe, Mike “Old Lowe”

M

mAcdonald, pat

Madansky, Lloyd “MadMan”

marking knives

McCartney, Paul

McNair, John

melaniejane

N

neck-through-body construction

Nickel, John

O

Olesak, Kimmer “KimmerO”

Orr, Mike

P

Page, Jimmy

Perkins, Carl

Piroth-Robert, Lenny (Daddy Mojo)

R

Richardson, Travis “Uncle Crow”

Romero, Brian “Bairfoot Cajun”

S

Schoen, Kurt

Seman, Peter

Sobell, Stefan

Speal, Shane

Chugger, The, and

Cigar Box Nation and

collection of

guitars for

musical influences of

Old Faithful and

photos of

tribute guitar to

Springfield, Rick

Stump, T.

Sutliff, Diane

T

Taylor, Hound Dog

Terrell, John

Thompson, Jerry

thumb pianos

Tiny Tim

tool tips

U

ukulele #1

ukulele #2

ukuleles. See also cigar box ukuleles

parts of a ukulele

popularity of

V

vintage spotlight

violins. See cigar box violins

W

Waters, Muddy

Williams, David “One String Willie”

Wood, Sam “Witchita Sam”

woods, selecting

Z

zithers, monochord

All famous player facts courtesy of Shane Speal. Fact credits: page 21, Guitar Player Magazine, 1976; page 33, Pittsburgh Post Gazette; page 43, Guitar Player Magazine; page 83, Guitar Player interview with Robert Lockwood Jr., July 1991, Journalist, Peter Lee; page 89, nps.gov/history; page 126, Guitar Player Magazine, July 1993; page 144, Sagan quote from Nelson, Stephanie and Larry Polansky, “The Music of the Voyager Interstellar Record,” Journal of Applied Communication Research (November 1993).