Preface

I started to seriously consider building guitars as a hobby in 2022. Since I am one to never choose the easy path, I wanted to go from zero to hero and do a from-scratch build immediately.

So, I bought wood, then more wood. Then tools. Then I started cutting… and f*cking up.

In the beginning, the only thing I really knew how to do well, was turning pretty wood into something that should have been thrown in the fire sooner rather than later.

Then something amazing happened - my friends told me to stop whining and get myself a guitar kit. I thought they were crazy.

6 months and plenty of firewood for winter season later, I acknowledged the hard truth - they may have been correct.

WTF is a guitar kit?

For those who have never gotten themselves deep into guitar building, DIY guitar kits are much like LEGO bricks. You order a box, which mostly comes stock with components and you get a chance to throw a bunch of (semi-)completed blocks together, and voila: guitar.

On the surface, kit guitars look like they teach you nothing about lutherie. After all, somebody already pulled their big boy pants up for ya and pretty much did all the planning, crafting, and decision-making already, right? Actually, the opposite.

Sure the guitar kit seriously lowers the barrier to entry into making your own guitars, but that barrier is still pretty f*cking high when you are just starting out.

Lesson learned: crawling is the first step to getting a shot at the 100m World record.

The sad reality is that this type of thinking - building something simple first and trying to sell it - is the first thing that most of my clients get to hear from me at the first meeting. I guess I should start to listen to myself more.

Beam me a kit, Thomann!

The decision of which kit to choose was pretty easy. It had 2 data points:

1. It shouldn’t be a Telecaster!

When I do my first from-scratch build, I’ll build a Telecaster. It’s the simplest guitar to build - probably by a margin of the width of the Universe and a half.

And while they are a classic, I don’t wanna completely fill my house with them any time soon.

2. Les Paul-style Single Cuts are pretty!

I don’t think this one needs a real subtitle, but I gave you one anyway.

I bought a Harley Benton SC kit and it arrived a few days later. Spent another couple of days researching wood stains, and sanding paper grains,…

Then to use the snowboard term - it was time to f*cking send it.

Shopping time!

Kiddo was off on a vacation with my parents and I took a day off. I wanted to start bright and early.

Except I wanted to drink 2 cups of coffee and re-check the plan for the n-th time, so I started late.

Also, decided I should probably grab a few things at the store as well - wood stain, wood oil, paper towels, a bunch of Red Bull, … you get the gist of it.

This is where I hit my first real lesson: Never. Ever. Buy $h!t on the day you are about to need it. We’re all super busy. So, always optimize for time.

I have a random orbital sander. I left that one at home and went to work manually. It was nice, no rush and I even put the headphones on, with an audiobook as background. Pure bliss.

What seemed like an eternity later

2 hours flew by and I was noticing that despite being super careful, it was getting hard to get the wood sanded evenly.

Non-uniform sanding leads to the wood stain binding into the wood unevenly, effectively leaving you with a guitar that looks like it came out of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians movie.

I quickly realized why even most experienced luthiers hate the process of sanding. Sanding is everything. It’s easy to do wrong and takes a lifetime to do right.

It also teaches you another valuable lesson: at some point, you have to allow yourself to stop trying to make it better.

I quickly realized that my one-maybe-two-day project was quickly turning into a 2-week war with the kit, so I changed strategies. I decided to get in the car and sit in traffic for a while, which allowed me plenty of opportunity to vent about my own stupidity.

I felt like the idiot repairman that comes to your house after 2 months of pleading for an appointment, then figures out the problem and disappears into the nearest hardware store, and returns the next week. That was me.

Drove home, got the orbital sander. Half an hour or so, and it was sanded to somewhat uniform color.

The waiting game

I followed the instructions and put some water on the guitar body and front of the headstock. This causes the wood fibers to raise, which makes it easy to finish-sand them later. Then I waited. 20 minutes felt like a lifetime.

I was also starting to feel the clock ticking. After 4 hours, I wanted to get home somewhat early.

My wife is used to me being optimistic about my time projections (a.k.a. late all the time), much like my clients.

When the wood dried, I proceeded with applying wood stain.

The good news - it spread on like a charm. The bad news - it also unintentionally spread to a nasty puddle on my workshop table.

More bad news - I completely forgot to put masking tape across the binding and it has turned from white to coffee black. Ouch.

Read the instructions again. 12 hours drying time before applying second coat. I may hate waiting more than sanding.

Feeling somewhat optimistic about the headstock color though. Small wins.

Time to snap a few pictures and head home.