Building an Electric Guitar

Hello! We're high school students in the Project Based Learning program at NOVA Tech High School. We want to teach you how to make a guitar from scratch. Our names are Marvin & Lyrikal.

We wanted to do this project because music is a motivation for both of us, and we love music. Also, we thought it would be pretty cool to build our own guitar. We had a very low budget and limited tools, so we had be creative about how we made our guitar. We hope to inspire other young people to try building a guitar. The whole project took us about three weeks.

We took apart our teacher's guitar to learn about the different parts and how they fit together.

We gathered all the tools we would need to build the guitar.

These included:

drill

router

sander

screwdriver

chisel

hammer

wood glue

sandpaper

wood filler

clamps

We got our wood from Menard's. It was two planks of wood that we glued together to be 1.5" thick.

We traced our teacher's guitar body for the template. Then we cut the cardboard template using an X-acto knife.

We cut the wood using the template and a jigsaw.

Measure dimensions of guitar body to make sure it works.

We shaped the guitar using sandpaper and a rotary sander.

We used the drill and router to cut the neck pocket and pick-up cavity for the electronics.

We measured to make sure our teacher's guitar neck fits our guitar body.

We found a source for the guitar electronics and parts and placed our order.

We installed the guitar electronics into the pickguard that we cut from a sheet of plastic.

We put on two coats of primer and then sanded. Then we added three coats of gold paint.

After the final coat of paint dried, we attached the neck and screwed on the pickguard with electronics attached. Finally, we installed new strings.

We will need to do some final adjustments, but the guitar is now finished!