Free guitar building course · Part 1
Designing a guitar,
and making the
templates.
Everything downstream inherits the decisions made here. An hour and a half on turning an idea into a drawing, and a drawing into templates you can cut against.
Watch on YouTube·Subscribe to the channel
Chapter markers coming — paste the timestamps from the video description into the chapters field in videos.py and they become clickable here.
What this covers
The design stage, from blank paper to a set of master templates. This is the part people rush, and the part that quietly decides whether everything later lines up.
- Turning a rough idea into a full-size drawing
- Choosing a scale length, and what changes when you move away from the standards
- Laying out neck pocket, bridge position and control cavities so they relate correctly
- Cutting master templates that stay accurate through repeated routing
Why templates are worth the time
A template is the difference between building one guitar and being able to build the same guitar again. It also removes the hardest part of routing: with a bearing-guided bit following a good template, the cut is exactly as accurate as the template, and no more.
Make them from something stable and thick enough for the bearing to ride on properly. Anything that flexes under the router transfers that flex straight into the wood.
Get the scale length settled first. It determines fret positions, bridge placement and string tension, and cannot be changed later without starting again. The fret calculator gives exact slot positions for any scale length, and the tension calculator shows how a set will feel at that length before you commit.
Written companion in progress — the video runs an hour and a half and covers considerably more than the summary above.
Watch the builds on YouTube
Full build videos, start to finish, including the parts that went wrong.
Build series · New video most monthsTools and pages that go with this
Settle your scale length before cutting a single template — it drives the neck, the bridge placement and the feel of the finished guitar.