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As a furniture maker you have all the essential tools. Soundholes can be cut with a scalpel blade in a batten, other tools you can make or improvise (look up gramil, used for cutting binding channels). I'd say the hardest parts are: Developing a feel for how the wood will behave, for...

Me, for one! This current thread: https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/a-slightly-oddball-guitar-t111602.html is documenting the build I'm doing at the moment. I've described it as oddball for two reasons: First, I have no plans but am designing it as I build it. It's loosely based on...

Ah, the sunny West Country. 20 degrees + and near 50% in semi-arid East Anglia. Carve the neck, I guess.

I had a gap, of course (the nice thing about HHG is that it dries nearly transparent, so you just look for light at the joint). Clamps, moisture, a little fresh glue and some heat, and all is good. Good though HHG is, I don't think a 1.5mm glueing surface is quite enough, as I'll be putting...

I'm back, and the wet weather has gone. So I can glue in the bracing for the top. It's really important to do this in low humidity - professional makers aim at around 45%, but I'm happy (for UK conditions) if humidity is around 50%. So outside humidity forecast at 55% and a little heating inside...

All the plates are now thicknessed so I can begin building the body. I draw the body shape on the inside of the top and then cut the sound hole. If I were making several guitars the same shape I'd make a mould for the body. But I find making a mould really hard (I think a spindle sander or...

Bending sides and a lucky escape! My bending kit is very simple - a piece of steel pipe into which I insert a heat gun. Once the pipe is hot enough for water drops to dance on its surface, it's ready for bending. Commonly I'll place a wet, clean rag on the pipe to generate steam, because this...

Along the grain - minimal movement. I'd be more concerned about cupping or twist in the sides, shelves and top, because oak does move more than most with humidity. Is the worktop material laminated from strips? That cuts down the risk because movement in each part tends to cancel out. I'd check...

I mainly make ukes - harder than guitars to make sound reasonable and nearly as much work! Either instrument is built just heavy enough not to collapse, otherwise it will be really quiet. A spruce top might be 3mm because spruce is less dense than mahogany. I'll explain some of the structural...

By popular request (OK, one person asked :D ) I'm documenting a guitar as I build it. This won't be a standard dreadnaught beast, but is vaguely inspired by the US parlor guitars of the 1930s. The methods I'm using don't require any specialist tools, and indeed you could build one of these...

Happy to document it but it's not a conventional build. For guitar players/builders: All mahogany parlour Ladder braced Floating bridge with chrome resonator tailpiece Pearloid fretboard 12th fret/body join (Possibly) Panormo-inspired adjustable neck joint. I need to feel brave for this as I've...

I'm recycling a Victorian wardrobe into a pair of parlour guitars. After resawing back and sides, they are about 8mm thick. I need to get down to 2mm or so. That's a lot of hand planing! But I've finally got my thicknessing toolkit together: The dark wood plane does all the rough work, the...

That's because you've effectively made the plane shorter, so it gets into the hollows. Try planing so that the plane travels at 30 degrees or so to the grain direction (note, one way will probably be easier than the other, so plane that way!). Take a slightly thicker shaving. Keep the plane...

I was expecting one of these:

There seem to be a few of us here. Much of what we obsess about is to do with achieving tone and playability, so not of general interest. But some of the woodworking techniques do seem of interest, to judge by the comments to my "Making a ukulele" thread a year or so back (now sadly ruined by...

I began using a Workmate, and planing was really hard work. Once I got a bench, planing was lots easier. I reckon the wobbliness of the Workmate absorbs at least 1/3 of the energy you put into each planing stroke, maybe more. Sharpness of plane blade is also a factor. I'm not a very good...

I find glue and sawdust always dries darker, because (as someone posted previously), sawdust is almost all end grain! This is true even if I use CA or hot hide glue. Using sawdust from a lighter coloured species of wood can help, though you have to create a test piece to see what the final...

Hard to say! I'd guess maybe 4mm of movement between dry air and humid air, but that's only a guess. I'd suggest putting it roughly where the finished item will live, and measuring its width on a crisp winter's day when the heating has been on for some hours. That's likely to be as narrow as...

Oh dear - all my goats are under age for this.

This is a standard problem when finishing musical instruments. The film finish shrinks as it cures, and shrinks right back into the pores. You can keep going until all the pores are filled, but that will be a few cycles of waiting weeks to see how much the finish shrinks and then adding more...