Part 1: Walnuts and Zebras

Building my first guitar was such a rewarding experience that I thought I'd try it again. I love the sound and feel of my Telecaster more than any other guitar I own - and that's saying' something seeing as I own quite a few guitars. However, because I have a lot of guitars already and wasn't really prepared to dive into 6-7 months of living with/creating another guitar when I have more than I can play now I decided to build something different - a lap steel guitar.

For those of you who are not familiar with Lap Steel guitars they came to prominence in the 30's, 40's and 50's centered mostly around Hawaiian and Country Music. Lap Steel guitars are also commonly used for Blues and Bluegrass (which is more my speed). I would guess that the most 'popular' player using lap steel guitars on a regular basis today would be Ben Harper but his stuff is just the tip of the iceberg.

I was introduced to the idea of lap guitar while working at Blue Man Group in Boston. One of the band instuments is part Lap steel and part Zither. The sound was raunchy and bluesy with the right amount of growl. It was good stuff and I've always wanted to mess around with one.

For the uninitiated - a lap steel has anywhere between 6 and 12 strings, is played with a slide (metal or glass usually) instead of your fingers, and is tuned to an open chord so that any where you place your slide on the 'fretboard' will make a useful chord. As the name suggests the instrument is placed in your lap instead of around your neck with a guitar strap and is quite often played with finger picks instead of the normal pick.

I decided to build my lap steel out of walnut - mainly because the chunk of wood that I found was the nicest looking piece of wood in the store that was also the right size for what I needed. So I bought a piece of 36 inch by 7 inch Walnut that was about 1 and 3/4 inches thick. It had a nice grain to it (burl?) and promised to be somewhat good looking when finished. As you may be able to see in the photo above the Walnut had some imperfections when I got it. It had a few burn marks where the wood planer got stuck and the end had what looks like some skips by the saw that cut the face of the wood. All of this will have to be sanded out.

I also picked up a 24 by 2 inch piece of zebra-wood that was about 1/4 of an inch thick to use as the fret-board material. Which is strange to say about a lap steel - seeing as they need no frets.

But we'll get to that...

Fuzzy close-up of the Zebra wood

So, I bought my wood - $30 for the two peices and I have an idea for how I want this thing to look. Now it's all about cutting and economy.

Part 2: Circular Saws, jig-saws, chop saws and other flesh eating creatures

As you might have been able to see from my "plans" in the last post - this lap-steel is going to have wings. To make the wings I first needed to cut out the shape of the neck/fretboard from the raw wood. The bits I cut off are going to be sliced, diced, and glued to the main body and turned into wings. As you can see in the above picture the first wing segments have been glued to the body.

I'm really not a fan of circular saws. I just want to come out and say that. I don't like things that can remove digits with ease. I like my fingers. I like them where they are. This dislike of circular saws extends to table saws and even colors my opinion of chop/miter saws and routers. I am not however, timid around jig-saws. Sadly (as I learned on my last project) a jigsaw isn't very useful when you want to remove large swaths of wood at a go and get it done with a finished edge. This time I thought I had it licked though. I made a guide for the Jig-saw to follow. I thought I had it all figured out. Yeah, not so much...

It seems that Jig-saw blades bend. So even though the body of the saw was going in a straight line the blade was cutting something in another part of town. Yeah, Jig-saws bite. So, I had to use a circular saw.

My main goal with regards to the design of this Lap-Steel is to create something with movement and a vaguely Art Deco feel too. Something in-between a 60's era corvette and the Empire State building. This has informed my choice of hardware, wood, and the finish I'm going to attempt. If you're gonna dream - dream big!

So, the process for this build has been this:
1) Sand the wood to remove the imperfections and get a look at the grain underneith.
2) Choose the side for the tuning pegs and measure 6 inches of space for the tuning peg area
3) Measure 23 inches from the "end" of the tuning pegs area to where the bridge will go. The scale length of this lap-steel will be 22.5 or 22.75 (I have to do the math to see which one is right) and I gave myself some extra room.
4) Measure where the fret board will sit. I'm still on the fence about having the fretboard wood sit on top of the body or routing out the neck a little so the fretboard will be flush with the neck. Since the neck is going to have beveled edges on top this could be tricky but flush seems like it will look better.
5) Remove aprox 2 inches of wood from either side of the neck. This will provide me with the wood needed to craft the wings.
6) Cut, sand, and generally shape the wings material in preperation for gluing to the body
7) Gluey glue-ing and clampy clamping. Presure and time are your friends.

And here we are. A very rough shape and one set of wings attached - ready for further shaping.

Part 3: Baby, can you dig your man?

I don't like to plan ahead. I'm just not that guy. I measure once and cut twice (and then sand out all the mistakes). It's my thing and I've been fighting it for as long as I can remember. But I'm also a Lemonade from lemons kind of guy - so it all works out in the end...
This carries over into my blogging. I like the finished result but don't always want to do all the steps in between. So, as you may be able to tell from the above picture - I've moved ahead a bit. When last I blogged the lapsteel had two wings and not much else. I wasn't even sure if the "fretboad" I'd chosen was the one I really wanted. Well, such mundane concerns haven't stopped me in the past - so why should they now? I inlaid the fretboard into the neck. It's glued in - so now I'm stuck with it. Prior to inlaying the fretboard I wasn't sure what scale length I wanted to make the guitar and I wasn't sure How I was going to make the trench/valley for the fretboard to lay in. Like I said - who needs to plan? I've got wood filler. Let's get to work!

I started out by making a template for the fretboard valley that my router was supposed to follow. I say "supposed to" because a template is only useful if you make it the right size... and shape... and, you know, ...if it's actually straight...

I messed up the template pretty badly. I blame it on crappy vice clamps - but the tool is only as good as the yahoo using it. So, the template bit the big one. I used it anyway and was able to route out (with the router) a pretty decent shaped valley for my fretboard to lay in. The only problem was the corners. There were none. Router blades are round. Fretboards have 90 degree angles.

...what to do?

Why, make it up as we go, of course! So, I grabbed the one lonely chisel I have and tried to make a right angle on all four sides of the valley. The chisel was pretty blunt and the chiseler was too - so the fretboard valley wasn't exactly perfect. Again, this is what wood putty, filler, and extra sawdust are for (or so I keep telling myself). Once the trench was routed and chiseled I glued the fretboard into place overnight. Once I fix up the rough edges it should look okay.

It was at about this time that I went back to my "plans" and realized that the body shape was a bit off. As it was - the neck was too long and the body too short to accomplish what I'd hoped for. So, I had to do some gluing. I added two small blocks of wood to the neck right above the wings that will be shaped later.
I won't tell you how horribly they were joined. I won't comment on how poorly they were cut. And I won't share with you how ugly the bottom looks right now - if you think the top looks bad - you wouldn't believe how bad the bottom looks. Let's put it this way - I will probably want to buy stock in wood filler/putty. But I digress...

Actually, the entire bottom is going to be covered in black material (probably felt) so that the guitar doesn't slide around on my lap. This is what I've seen on the bottom of some 50's and 60's lapsteels - so I'm thinking there might be something to it.

After such an eventful and less than successful day working on this - I took a few weeks off from production and came back to it in early November.

Part 4: Router - It gives you wings!

So, this is the National New Yorker Lapsteel. This was originally the inspiration for building my lapsteel. I was going to try and replicate this guitar. I have since decided to move towards something more automotive. Think a 1960's corvette mixed with a Buck Rogers ship. I'm probably still going to copy the headstock of the New Yorker but not much else. (click on the above image to see the headstock.

The below images are where I am as of 11/16.

Part 5: I've got Wood!

I went shopping! I'm starting to become one of those nutbags who loves wood. But I think it's kinda justified when you look at the wood I bought. From Left to right:


Cocobolo (it just rolls off the tongue)
Ebony
Pau Fero (I have no idea how to say this one)
Kingswood (??? not sure - the name is abbreviated on the tag)


All of them except the Cocobolo look shiny because they were covered in a thick coat of wax when I bought them. All of them have been scrapped but the cocobolo is the only one to be sanded too. These wood blanks are intended for "turning" - a wood working hobby that requires turning pieces of wood at high speeds on a lathe to create pens, chess pieces, and other small objects du arte.

These guys just looked too good to be true and I have some ideas about how I'm going to use them for this project (and ones down the road).

My fabulous girlfriend is a quilter and one of the traits of being a quilter is that you end up building a stash of fabric over time (either because you see a fabric you like but don't need right now - or you end up with leftovers from a project).

...I was telling myself that I'm just building up a stash of wood for future projects when I bought all four pieces. I only plan to use one of these for the lapsteel.

...but which one?

Part 6: Where's my raygun?

Things are starting to shape up the way I'd envisioned. It's starting to look very Buck Rogers. I'm having a hard time envisioning the headstock now that everything is so 'automotive' in design. The National New Yorker headstock (see Part 4) just doesn't seem right anymore. But we'll see. Perhaps I can modify that design to work with this shape.


So, I went with the cocobolo as my accent wood. I made the second set of wings and a stripe on the top face out of the wood blank I purchased. I'm also going to make a hand-rest out of the remaining cocobolo (I just love that word) that will be placed right above the pickup. I'm going to go all super fancy and make it removable too. Router - don't fail me now!


I went with the cocobolo (see, isn't it just fun to read?) because it had the nicest grain pattern. There are browns and reds and blonds and even some purple all mottled together in these tiny pieces of wood. Cocobolo is a central/south american wood that has many of the same visual characteristics of Brazilian Rosewood but differs quite a bit in other qualities. Cocobolo is almost waterproof (some samples don't even float in water), it has a lot of natural oils in the wood. So finishing this guitar is going to be a trip. Some sites I read suggest just hand rubbing the wood after sanding it. It won't need any further protection. It's supposed to polish up quite nicely.


I have a lot, a lot, a lot of sanding and scraping in my future. I was able to rough shape the second set of wings with a combination of a rasp and heavy duty sandpaper. I was originally going to use a sanding drum on my power drill but the cocobolo just gummed it up too fast to use for more than a few minutes at a time.


Sanding is a trip with this stuff. I bought decent grade sandpaper and started at 60 grit just to get things moving. It is slow going and the sandpaper is constantly getting gummed up. I've also been told that this stuff is pretty hard on your power tools - so we'll see how often I use this.


But I gotta say - even in its rough form - I love the way this stuff looks. It might not have been the best pairing with walnut (as you can see from the pictures it's hard to see where all of the cocobolo is. But I'm hoping that this is because I hit the whole piece with a heavy coat of mineral spirits prior to shooting these pictures.

Part 7: Head Hunting

So today was the day. I finally had to get off the pot - as it were. I’d shaped the lapsteel to the point where it was starting to look like my plans but there was still the matter of the headstock.
Now originally I had intended to base the entire design off of the National New Yorker lapsteel (see here). But early on it became clear that I was heading more for an automotive look for this than a true art deco look (this coming from the guy who never got beyond the renaissance in art history – so take my definitions with a grain of salt).

This presented a bit of a problem with regards to the headstock. Now that the rest of the guitar looks like it was a reject from a 1930’s Flash Gordon serial – what should I do with the head? This presented two problems really. In order to install the tuning keys there needs to be enough space on the headstock for six of them. But the shafts of the tuning keys (the bit that the guitar strings wrap around) are only 1 inch long. They need to stick out of the guitar about ½ inch so that means the headstock can only be about a half inch (give or take a 16th of an inch). Here’s my issue – the wood is about 1 ¾ inches thick. Also the headstock has to be about six inches long and about 2 ½ to 3 inches wide.

What I'm getting at with all these numbers is this: I have no saw that will make this cut well.

Add to the mixture that I don’t want my lapsteel to have a right angle cut where the fretboard meets the headstock and we’ve got some wood extermination issues. How’s that? First time too much wood was a real problem?

What to do…?

Well lads and ladies – here’s what I did.



I’m sure if my girlfriend or mother saw this while I was doing it they would have had a heart attack but I assure you it was very stable. For the little tykes at home – don’t do this without parental supervision.

So, I used the built in vice grip on my chop saw and a clamp to squeeze the piece on the table itself. I then used my handy table (or whatever it’s called) and leveled the piece with a two by four in the jaws of the handy table. I then clamped the piece to the 2x4 sticking out of the handy bench (not pictured). It was pretty solid. The piece just barely fit under the blade in the blade’s resting position (I did have to move the plastic guard out of the way to make it all work out).

For real – please be careful if you are going to do this yourself. This is not how a chop saw is meant to be used. You could end up with a chunk of wood embedded in your ribs – or worse. Be safe.

As I knew it wouldn’t – the saw did not cut all the way through. It’s a circular saw there are bound to be some curves when you are cutting outside of the supported sizes. I was loath to flip the piece and cut from the other side. I’m not the most precise wood worker in the world and had visions of cutting too much. In addition the reverse side of the piece had an uneven edge – making the balancing act carried out on the first cut dubious at best. So, I switched to hand tools. I knew I had a lot of shaping in my future so I wasn’t all that concerned with a rough first draft.

I will now digress…

I am starting to become proud of my tool collection. It’s a nice collection. Not enough to build a house – but enough to repair any holes big Aunt Sally makes should she start a hootenanny in the living room. I have a chop saw, a radial saw, a jig saw, a miter saw, two (count ‘em two!) hack saws, a drywall saw, and even a small thin “flush” saw to make things all, “nice-nice.”

Yeah, none of them would touch this thing except the jig saw.

Digression over...

You can see my previous posts here and here regarding my fear and loathing of jig saws. I did everything in my power to avoid using it but in the end had to acquiesce. The problem was the size of the cut and the precision necessary. All of the string tension is going to sit at this one location – the thinnest part of the guitar (I didn’t come up with this paradigm – it’s just how these things are built – note to self – maybe time for new paradigm). So, I needed this to be the best cut on the guitar – especially since from here on in – I’m going to be cutting, drilling, and sanding more wood away from this area of the guitar. Better to start big and work my way down, no?

No, none of the other saws worked (miter saw would only cut 3 inches deep, hack saw couldn’t cut straight (and is meant for metal), flush saw just bent in place and cringed at the amount of wood needed to be removed. The radial saw? That would be like swatting a fly with a meshershnmit (and would probably ruin the piece). The drywall saw? Well, maybe that would have worked but it was on loan at the time.

No. No, it was going to be me and the jig saw – again. I’m happy to say with a little patience and three different blades – it all worked out.



Issue 1 solved. Remember issue 2? It has been a rather long post – so maybe not. The shape!

Yeah… I kind of winged it a bit.


I have some shaping to do in the near future. Nothing is symmetrical yet – but the shape is there and how I’m going to fashion it into something that gels with the rest of the guitar is in my head. One thing at a time.

Next thing – that darn right angle. This is a lapsteel people. There are no sharp corners for laps! Okay, there aren’t for this project. Your mileage may vary. So here’s what I did.
Instead of trying to find a saw that would make the drastic cut I had in mind - I said to hell with common sense and cried, “Pass me the rasp!”



Even as I said this I knew I was in for a long slog. It was probably because at this point in the afternoon I felt that a cold frosty beverage was in order. I don’t mix power tools and beer (I want to some day play this thing with all 10 digits) that the switch to hand tools made more sense to me in some weird way. But there I was, scraping a ½ inch of wood from the back of my baby – by hand. To completely paint the picture for you – I was sitting –straddled - on the guitar so I could apply all my weight and leaning into the thing just enough to rack off wood but not enough to upset the applecart.

(and every now and then sipping a bit of brew)

To be honest – I’m really starting to like the hand tool part of this build. It’s long and tedious and somewhat exhaustive but the wood literally shapes itself (comes alive) in your hands. I’m pretty sure at some point I’m going to attempt to build a guitar with nothing but hand tools sometime in the future.

As you can see – It was a rousing success! The rasp worked like a hungry redneck at a free chicken and biscuit night. The neck is starting to take shape like I originally imagined it.

A few hits with the router and then the sander on all sides at 60 and 100 grit left me with this.








Yeah, that’s right. I play a rocket ship. What do you play?

Part 8: Holy Walnut Batman!

I found out while making my first electric that guitars are in fact full of holes. I took so much wood out of the Telecaster that it's surprising that there was any wood left to color the tone.

I'm a big fan of shaping and sanding wood but to make it look like you want (and for it to function as a guitar) you gotta go digging. So here are some pictures of the lapsteel being excavated.


String holes
The strings will go through the body - so these six holes for that. I'll be using tiny ferules to smarten up the appearance. Those will be installed after I put a finish on the guitar. So for a while these'll look a little rough. The big hole right be hind the six small ones is either going to be for the volume control knob of the varitone switch. My money's on the varitone.


Control Cavity
So, I said I wasn't proud of the bottom of the guitar (and you can see why) but I figured if someone is really interested in this - they'll want to see how the whole thing comes together. The six big holes are again for the strings and will have larger ferules to hold the strings in place. I'm using the same type of ferules I used for the Telecaster build - mainly because they came out so well on that guitar that I figured why mess around with a good thing? The big cavity is for the varitone (or volume) control/knob. I'll have to get a soldering iron in there and the varitone switch is big - so I made the hole big. This will be covered either by a piece of wood or a plastic control cavity. I haven't decided which yet. The streaks and light colored bits are wood filler for all of the miss-matched joints. I haven't finished filling all of the seams and cracks yet but I will prior to gluing the covering on the back.

The back (or backing) is usually fabric - to help the lap steel stay on your lap. As of right now I'm vacillating between black felt (which is traditional) a yoga mat (which is super effective), and a swath of leopard print which I've had for 10 years (I don't know why I kept it for a decade either). Either way - there will be a gap in the fabric so that I can get to the string ferules and electronics.


The hole for the imput jack.
Yeah, this was no fun to drill. The first inch or so was done with a forsner bit and the remaining 3/4 of an inch was done with a standard bit. It took forever but now the input jack and the control cavity are connected. I was a bit nervous about this hole because there is a crack in the walnut that I had to drill through. It ended up being fine but just like on the telecaster build I had to put my whole body into drilling this hole - for a long time. ...I need to buy a drill press...



I also had to drill the holes through the headstock for the tuning pegs. I'm going to talk more about the headstock in a future post. It was a difficult process all around and deserves its own post.
For the record - this was a pain in the ass. If you can get your hands on a drilling template (Stewart MacDonald) and a drill press (craigslist) - do it!
Those two items would have made this part of the build much easier.

Also, as you can see the slope leading from the neck to the headstock is a bit mis-shaped. Right where the headstock begins it gets very thin and then gets thicker as you get to the end of the headstock. This is technically a no-no. Right at that thin part is where all of the string tension is going to sit. Walnut is tough - but I'm asking a lot. This was one of those times where hand shaping things didn't work in my favor. It looks pretty decent (considering how much wood I shaved off by hand) but time will tell if this is the Achilles heal.

Part 9: "It looks good - how does it smoke?"

You'd almost think I knew what I was doing!
Okay, my moment of hubris is over lest I tempt the wrath of the wood gods or the ire of the router king...
In short - I'm happy with how it looks. There are many many many mistakes and goofs but overall it looks how I wanted it to. I'm only about 60% done but it looks further along than that. Here's what's cookin' today:
(FYI - there is a healthy whallop of mineral spirits on the wood for most of these images - hence why they look so sleek).

My original intention was not to create my own nut and bridge out of brass and cocobolo. When I first started planning this build I was going to make the bridge and nut out of aluminum. Because it's easy to do and cheap! You cut a peice of aluminum to size, slot the top for strings and maybe smooth out the edges so you don't hurt yourself on sharp metal. The problem is that this looks exactly like what it is - a piece of cheap aluminum, bought at home despot and repurposed for something it was never intended to be.

Then I had a brainstorm - why not use both? My plan is to cover the bridge with some kind of hand-rest - so you'll never see it. So, after I had spent the better part of 2 hours shaping, sanding, and polishing the cocobolo used for the nut - the idea of using aluminum for the bridge (which was already cut to size) sounded great!

For the curious: I sanded the cocobolo down to size (so that it would match the height of the aluminum bridge) with 150, 220, 320, and 400 grit sand-paper. Then I polished it with 000-steal-wool. I went through the same process shaping the valley that holds the brass rod. I wrapped sandpaper around the rod and shaped the valey that way - by hand. It took a while to get it right.
I cut the brass rod with a hack saw and then polished that as well with the steel-wool (after rounding off the corners with a file).



FYI - the coin is a 1937 Irish 1 penny piece. I'm toying with the idea of inlaying it right about where it is.


As you can see from the images of the headstock - something is rotten in the state of denmark. It's a whole post unto itself - but in short - the headstock now has a piece of walnut veneer on it - hiding sins most grave. I'll speak of it soon.

Part 10: Progress...

(click on the photos to see close-ups)

It's been a while since I've made any headway on this build - but I'm back at it. It's winter - what else am I gonna do?

Recent work:

Drilled the hole on the top (and the cavity in the back) for the volume knob.

Inlaid a strip of cocobolo the length of the neck and headstock

Inlaid the Irish penny piece (needs some sanding and polishing still)

Inlaid the fret-dot markers. Man, it you are off by even 0.5 mm it looks funky. Still - it was fun.

Burnt the 'frets' using a wood burning tool. Bought a metric ruler and a set of calipers for this. FYI - calipers rock.

I 'dressed' it with all the hardware for these shots. I still have a bunch of things to do before assembly. Including making a new nut. That aluminum has got to go...

Part 11: Taking her out for a test drive (aka Buzz Buzz Buzz)

Partly because I’m impatient and partly because it worked out so well on the last guitar I built – I decided to take the lapsteel out for a test drive prior to 'finishing' it. I found that it was very useful when making my Tele to assemble the instrument and see where the issues were prior to putting a finish on the wood. That way if I screwed up royally – I could still fix it without having to re-finish the guitar.

And just like last time – I’m glad I did.

In my haste to finish the guitar (so I can start playing it - for the love of all that’s holy) I was less than precise with regards to the nut and bridge construction. In short – the strings are not uniform in height or spacing – so you have to compensate while playing. This was the first time I’ve made a bridge (or nut) from scratch – so some mistakes were to be expected. It’s playable but I’m not happy with it – so I’ll be revisiting this before I shellac the instrument.

I also ran into a bigger problem - Grounding.

I know very little about guitar construction. I know less about guitar wiring. I dislike soldering and would be fully prepared to build some bloke a guitar for free if he/she will do my soldering for the next ten years. I find it that onerous.

So, imagine if you will, me poring over a wiring schematic (courtesy of Seymour Duncan) with soldering iron in hand - and realizing I have nothing to “ground” the electronics of this guitar to. See Wiki if you don’t know what grounding or a ground loop is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_(electricity)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_loop_(electricity)

The first time I plugged the guitar in it buzzed like a fridge. Like having a bee stuck in your ear for hours. It was no good and I ran back down to my workshop to unsolder everything and try again.

On my second attempt I soldered the pickup directly to the input jack – no volume or tone controls between. I went back up to the music room and found the buzz still there.

Grrrr…

While sitting there I happened to try placing a spare scrap of wire between components to see if I could ground the signal to something. I even screwed a metal screw into the cavity of the guitar in the vague hope that by connecting a wire to that I could ground the signal to the body of the guitar.

Did I mention that I know next to nothing about wiring?

At last I came across something that worked – I connected the scrap of wire to a string ferule on one end and the input jack on the other. Bingo – buzz gone!

So, one last time I went to the basement and resoldered everything. In order to do this I had to drill a tiny hole between the control cavity and the bottom of the string ferule hole. The ground wire is sandwiched between the bottom of the ferule and the hole that it sits in. Once the guitar is strung up to pitch – the string tension holds the wire in place. Not sure what I’m going to do when I put this together for real – but that’s one less problem to have to anticipate.

I am keeping the wiring for this guitar as simple as I can: One pickup, one volume knob, one varitone knob and the input jack.





So now that she doesn't sound like a 1970's alarm clock - I was able to test her out. She sounds good! I'm a crappy lapsteel player but no one can say I've got crappy gear.
Sound files coming soon!