there's a few things that
I never do on this channel first,
I never speak to the audience but this is for a greater cause
so I'm willing to break that first rule second,
I never use background music third rule,
no sponsor or publicity but this video is part of the
great guitar build of competition hosted by crimson guitarist based in the UK this is a friendly competition that allows
Youtubers and makers to showcase their creativity by building a guitar the competition's goal is to raise
money for different charities across the globe so head off to greatguitarbuildof.com (AND VOTE FOR ME :p) to learn more about the initiative now before I break more rules like
the incorrigible outlaw that I am let's go to the build when crimson contacted me, I had to decide if I would go for
a kit build or a scratch build and I've had the idea of making a
guitar out of one piece for a long time well I've been making guitar for
a year and a half so that's a lie let's say that I've asked myself once or twice how hard it would be to make
a guitar with no neck joint this was the perfect occasion to try it out and that's why I'm not making a kit build because building a guitar out
of one piece with two pieces is very hard I chose to work with a slab of cherry wood because it was the only board in
the lumber yard that suited my needs it's wide enough, it's vaguely tone wood and I've never worked with that before if I really had the choice though
I would have made this project out of walnut before removing the wood
surrounding the neck and body I took advantage of that nice flat surface and routed out the channels
for the reinforcement bars and the truss rod I suspected that the main
challenge with this build was going to be the clearance over the bandsaw so I drilled a few strategic
holes around the guitar and then made a couple of cuts with the handsaw this allowed me to maneuver the piece around
the blade without too much safety hazard this was rewarding because
an hour before this shot this was still an ugly board and now it looks like a guitar from Minecraft I just used the router and
my one piece template to get to the final line I made this low-tech router
sled specifically for this build here I'm using it to remove
some wood around the neck area and I'll take care of the rest
of the top with the surfacing bit I went for a Fender style headstock because my stock wasn't thick enough to tilt the head to my usual 14° and the scarf joint would have defeated the idea
of a one-piece guitar here I'm removing the wood
at the back of the neck and the headstock I did try to do it on the bandsaw first
but it quickly seemed dangerous and I do like my fingers very very much from this point on the project really felt like
making a simple neck through and I'll switch to hand
tools working almost entirely to shape and carve the rest of the guitar I usually do this step with a spokeshave but I discovered that using a little block plane
gives you those springy shavings and they're kind of funny looking I like to apply mineral spirit
when I'm done working on an area it makes the grain pop out
and magnifies all the little scratches and dents
that I might not have seen just so you know
I do have a grinder and a flap disc but I never use them you can call me old-fashioned but I enjoy using my carving gouge
and my mallet a lot more I don't know …
I find it relaxing also,
try to play a polyrhythm with a grinder rule number four,
I do not sell anything not even my guitars to better understand that
here's my youtube routine: usually, when my strings need changing,
instead of buying new ones I just build a guitar while doing so, I learn a few things along the way I film the whole thing put it on youtube and everyone's happy.
This time is different the guitar I'm building here could be yours because it's going to be auctioned off on ebay and all the benefits of the sale
are going to be a donation to charities the truss rod and
the reinforcement bars arrived in the mail and it was time to install them
to stiffen the neck the fretboard also came in the box here I'm cutting a little access hole
for the trussrod adjustment by the way, the only reason why I didn't
make a cherry fretboard was because I read somewhere that
it wasn't a good choice for fingerboards because it is too soft for
the fret tanks to hold on to and since I'm that naive kind of guy
who believes everything he reads on the interwebz I just glued the fretboard on if you win the bidding I think you should know that all 24 frets were pressed in by my four
and a half year old daughter but don't worry, I double checked let's talk about rule number five I never asked the audience to
"comment like and subscribe" and this time is no exception although I'm just gonna
ask you to share this video with anyone you know that is
vaguely interested in guitars because as I said,
anybody will be able to bid on this guitar between the June 1st and June 11th the bidding is going to happen
on the GGBO's ebay page half of the benefits of the sale
are going to the GGBO's own charity and the other half is going
to a charity that I chose the one I chose is called "Infirmiers de Rue" it's a Belgian nonprofit organization whose name could be translated
into "Street nurses" their goal is to end homelessness by providing healthcare as
well as re-housing solutions for the homeless people
in two major cities in Belgium and they've been doing that for 15 years now I won't go into the details as to why
this cause matters a great deal to me but let's say that through my day job, I know for a fact that funding
these types of organizations never goes to waste
and it can actually change lives if you cannot bid on the guitar
you can always go to their website and make a donation from there the link will be in the description box below also I grew up live and work in Brussels but there are organizations with the same goal
everywhere around the world so if it makes more sense to you please consider making a donation
to YOUR local street nurses instead because of the carving on the front and the back I don't have access to a flat reference anymore so I had to do these roundovers by hand when you touch the guitar now there really is an organic feel to it there's something like
12 coats of true oil on this guitar why 12?
I have no idea I watched the dozen tutorials on true oil and ended up with a dozen
drastically different methods Make up your mind, people! anyway I figured that
since the guitar is going to travel the more the better 10 days later I went back and knocked off
the gloss with some steel wool to get a matte finish and then I used a polishing compound
to get to a satin finish again quick word about this wooden pickguard since the guitar doesn't have a neck pocket I had to find a way to route a channel between the neck pickup
cavity and the control cavity and I didn't want to make a big control plate
at the back because I wanted to preserve the one piece look so this is what I came up with few people know this but this is how pickup rings were made
in the 15th century and this is my take on this ancient forgotten art the knobs are asymmetrical on this guitar the volume not being larger than the tone knob and that's because I wanted to stress
the offset design of the guitar surprisingly it didn't seem to bother anyone
when I first posted it on instagram but the person who buys the guitar
is gonna get an extra knob to make it symmetrical,
if she or he wants to see, this is why I don't talk on my videos it shows people how insecure I am
about my artistic choices in the end,
what did I think of this build well,
as you'll see in the beauty shots, it looks gorgeous from behind it really feels like the guitar was carved
directly out of a tree nature is beautiful and I think that all guitars should display
the natural beauty of the wood but that's just my woodworker's opinion another advantage
of the neck being one piece with the body was that I never had to ask myself
"where did I put the neck again, …
… I hope it's in a safe place" which happens surprisingly often
with my other builds you've heard me freaking
out about asymmetrical knobs so now you know
that I don't have the boldness yet to make a crazy guitar design
with detachable smaller instruments on it or a guitar with an animal face as a body so this was my way of making something rare enough
to be visually interesting one might argue that it's a
considerable waste of wood and that would be true
if guitars like this were mass-produced but one thing you should know
about my work ethics is that I don't believe in waste I've learned woodworking mostly
by working with scrap wood then when I felt confident enough
I started buying rough on boards but I kept the habit of making projects
with the offcuts …
… and then the offcuts of the offcuts so don't worry the remains of this guitar
will become something … …someday you could also think that it's tedious
and not worth the effort well, not really at times it was annoying to have
the body in the way of the neck and then the neck in the way of the body but all in all it just felt
like a fat bottom neck-through
I don't see myself making another
semi-hollow body guitar anytime soon and I certainly never make a guitar
with one hand again but I might want to do another one of those
one piece guitars in the future because it was actually pretty fun
and the end result is kind of unique plus, I'd do it a lot faster,
now that I know how rule number six, I never put a sound demo
at the end of a build video I usually make the audience
wait not a few weeks and publish a separate video
when everyone's sick of waiting today I'll overcome my youtube
guitar playing stage fright because it's for a good cause before I leave though, I would like to thank Crimson guitars for having
me as a guest this year I don't know if it was an intern's mistake,
that they somehow had to stick to but that allowed me to play way out of my league and I'm not even kidding I've been following half of this year's lineup
way before I built anything if you haven't yet you should definitely check out
this year's main contest of the GGBO where hundreds of amateur luthiers
from around the world are currently making guitars
that are just incredible even more than in last year's edition there's a playlist on crimson youtube page
and it's compiling all the videos I was part of last year's unofficial challenge and it amazed me to see how the contest
brought us all together so yeah thanks for that too