I haven't been able to string it up fully yet but I have at least heard it sing for the first time. At the moment, the open string is playing a G#.
There is a whole cottage industry specifically devoted to the building of cigar box guitars but as I live in Australia where the rates of cigar smoking is minimal, the number of cigar boxes that are available to make guitars out of, is also minuscule. As such, we have to source other boxes and I this case, because I wanted something reasonably substantial, I bought a craft book box from Bunnings for $20. The neck is that 42mm x 19mm pine which is found in those bins in the timber section and is ridiculously cheap.
The neck is a straight through piece of wood, which has been doubled when passing through the guitar, and then screwed into place with a couple of brace pieces inside the box.
I imagine that most people who attempt to build their own guitar would have a decent workbench and possibly a bunch of power tools. I only have hand tools and no workbench at all. A lot of the sawing that I need to do, is done with the bit of wood, laid out on the ground and suspended on firewood. A workbench would also be tremendously useful when drilling things.
I am grateful that I have both a hole saw and a coping saw; those things are incredibly useful.
The paint on this is mostly Chromacryl, which you'll find in most stationery shops; though some of the paint was a tin of outdoor metal acrylic. I realised by happy accident that I could make fret marks by simply sawing across the fretboard and into the paint.
Again, I had no idea when setting out that this was going to be black but seeing as we had some black paint in the shed and I knew that the sound holes would stand out against the black, then the choice practically decided itself. If a guitar is going to have a name and most people tend to number their cigar box guitars, then logically this should be called Black #5.
The tail piece is simply just a couple of holes drilled through the neck; with six rivets that push into the holes. Someone much wiser than me worked out a long time ago that the standard balls at the end of the strings, sits nicely against one of those rivets. The bridge is just an offcut with one of the pins from rivet laid across in a cut groove. The nut is made from a nut and bolt. There are three eyelets as guides for the strings. Those sound holes are tea strainers, which were recovered from #3A. #3A was a wee little whiner and buzzed horrendously and was strung EBE with the top three strings but it exploded the head-stock in a summer¹.
As I only had one string which was a 40 gauge, I could only string that up to get an idea of what this is going to sound like. I think that it needs the three bottom strings from a guitar; probably with the lowest at about 56 and tuned to DAD². That would mean that what would be the 4th and 5th strings are tuned normally and the bottom string would be tuned down a whole step.
I found that I had to put more tension through the strings to stop the nut from buzzing and I fixed that by simply adding that nut to the other end of the bolt. Admittedly that raised the action of the guitar but seeing as it will be played with a slide, that's more or less irrelevant. What Black #5 seems to be telling me, is that it is demanding to be played loudly and it wants lower strings. I think that the voice that fits this guitar, is a low howl rather than a high pitched scream.
Black #5 is way heavier than my other box guitar and almost as heavy as my regular acoustic. This thing is a beast and deliberately so because I didn't want it to suffer the same fate as #3A. I had hoped to install an electric humbucker and maybe I still can, as I have left space to do that; the one I got from Aldi, broke as I was trying to drill some holes into the tangs on the side, so that I could attach it.
I have no proper workshop, no proper workbench, no mitre box, not table saw, no band saw, and no table router. I do however have some simple tools, an attitude of bravado and a streak of insanity. I got excited and made a guitar. If I can, you can. Get excited: make things!
¹http://rollo75.blogspot.com/2018/12/horse-2496-imperfect-and-cheap-is.html
²DAD tuning on a three string guitar is tuned to jokes. BADDAD tuning on a six string guitar is worse than Bad Dad Jokes. BAGDAD tuning sounds like Iraqi metal music.³
³No really, it does - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcuucFMtoas
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