Build Your Own Acoustic Guitar: Complete Instructions and Full-Size Plans

Great resource for aspiring guitar builder. Although the author doesn't go as deep as I would like into some parts (Pretty much minor stuff that can be easily looked up on the internet), the book is well written and it reads great. Enclosed are plans for a guitar (I think it was drednaught model). The book is full of photos of many guitars and one of them is documented while built (Maybe it was more than one guitar, but nevertheless he didn't skip any part. The book includes many tips for (e.g. how to substitute certain tools that you may have not access to). On the other side that is the only problem as well. While the author assumes that you may not have for example thickness sander and presents a way to plane the wood by hand with few tips how not to chip or otherwise damage the wood while doing so, on some other page he assumes that you have access to something called Go-bar press, which I assume is not that hard to make, but as he himself claims you will probably not build one until you have built few guitars as it is not worth it, but he won't present any substitute anyway. Well, it's not that hard to think of something yourself.Maybe one other issue, he sticks to only one guitar design in the whole book. He discusses few other woods and claims that for example Hawaian Koa cannot be thickness sanded due to it's oily, figured nature, that it is hard to do by hand and things like that, but he doesn't discuss how to deal with these kinds of wood anyway. That was something I would love to know, I was thinking of building a Koa instrument as my first acoustic project. Well I guess I will not risk that now as the wood is too expensive to destroy on first attempt and he says it's not that easy to work with.Anyway, overall great value (for a beginner anyway, I can imagine there are some books discussing the subject deeper for intermediate luthiers), catching book and I think great gift for any acoustic player as I cannot imagine any who wouldn't want to learn about how that piece of wood he plays was made.By the way, I didn't really mind the "advertising" of Kinkade guitars. His guitars are nice and I can imagine sound great. After all it was Jonathan Kinkade who wrote this book, so why wouldn't he promote his stuff? Also, his own guitars are probably the best source for photography due to copyright issues and similar things.

I loved this book! But as the author says, this book is "the way that works for me". Having taught adults and children myself, I know very well that the first difficulty is always finding the right level of detail so that the teacher neither bores or loses the student. For me, Kinkead was right on the mark. So much so, that I could hardly put the book down, and as I finished it, I almost felt as though I already made my first guitar! This book would be frustrating for someone without much woodworking experience or for someone who had already built a couple of guitars. I loved it because I am about to build my first guitar and I have some background. I am a mostly self-taught lifelong woodworking hobbyist with a mechanical engineering degree. I have been a math teacher, a machinist, and a manufacturing manager, and for the last 12 years have been working as a computer consultant. I have recently done some guitar repair work (a bit of a hack job, but it worked!) and I am about to build my first guitar.Before I read Kinkead's book, I read Roger Siminoff's "Luthier's Handbook". This was a fantastic book that taught me first to appreciate how acoustic stringed instruments work. I was astounded by how little I knew, but delighted to learn. I found this book an excellent place to start.My second book was Cumpiano and Natelson's "Guitarmaking Tradition and Technology". This book is useful, but not at all inspiring. I expect to use it as a reference, and for it's ideas on alternate construction techniques, but I found that it did not have the right level of detail for me - it often described steps in agonizing detail sprinkled with undefined specialized terms and without much clarity of where each set of steps was taking me. I couldn't bring myself to read it cover to cover, but I'm not going to give it away either.Kinkead's was my third and most delightful book on building a guitar. I can't wait to get started.

I've had the opportunity to look at quite a few books on the construction of acoustic guitars. If I had to choose one book to build my first acoustic guitar, it would be "Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology" by Campiano/Natelson. However, like any book it has its limitations. I found Jonathan Kinkead's book, "Build Your Own Acoustic Guitar", an **outstanding** compliment to Campiano's book. Kinkead's book is clear, logical, and contains a very generous amount of visually informative high quality photos (vs. Campiano's somewhat low rez b/w photos). When questions arose with one book, I was generally able to find the answer in the other. With only 6 months of serious woodworking experience behind me (building primarily dressers), I was able to use these two books to successfully (and proudly) build two steel string acoustic guitars with a minimal amount of outside assistance.

This book provides a good introduction to lutherie by providing step-by-step instructions for building an X-braced acoustic guitar. It includes a full-sized plan sheet that can be transferred directly to acrylic templates. Some steps are a bit dated (most people now bend with a blanket and a Fox-style bender which this book doesn't mention, for example) and it doesn't have any discussion as how to choose the angles of the X-braces and tone bars. However I find that the shortcomings are easily remedied by a few Google searches. This is a great guide for building your first (or several) guitars.

The book is put together magazine style with lots of full color pictures. Just browsing through the book is inspiring and makes you feel like heading to the wood shop to start building a guitar. Also a bonus that there is a packet toward the back with plans for building a dreadnought guitar, clearly patterned after the mighty Martin.

Gostei muito, o livro é bem ilustrado!!!

Manuale in lingua inglese ma con molte foto dettagliate. Con il libro viene fornito un piano per la costruzione di una OM. Molto dettagliata la lista degli utensili con foto. La traduzione non è difficile ed il fatto che sia in lingua inglese ti fa conoscere i termini tecnici dei liutai di oltreoceano. Consiglio.

I am nearly done building my first guitar with these plans (about to attach the neck to the body!) and have not had to look elsewhere for additional information.The book starts with lots of great information about different types of guitars, materials, tools, what tools you can make, what you can do without, etc. this first bit is worth the price of the book.Once the guitar building portion starts you will find many well lit pictures to accompany the instructions which leaves little to no concern about each step. At this point the only thing that I have looked up elsewhere is how to build a jig for my router to cut the binding channel. Everything else has been abundantly clear.He makes it clear when you are performing a task that requires extra attention to detail, when you have multiple options, and when you can get creative.I decided to build my guitar using his plans that came with the book which is an OM size guitar. I used a high grade sitka spruce for the top which I was able to pick out in person and knew what to look and listen for because of the book. I have black walnut for the back and sides (ordered online), walnut for the neck, ebony for the saddle and fingerboard, curly maple binding plus a lot of B/W/B, etc for decoration. I used mahogany for the end blocks and used a little bit of that to decorate the tailpiece too. I also decided to make my guitar a little thicker with a modified Florentine cutaway that I could not have gotten without making the guitar myself.I will likely build another after I finish this one because I know that I made little mistakes that come with a first woodworking project like this plus I want to try some different materials with the same body to see how the sound changes. First I will build a travel guitar using his book again but with a set of plans for a smaller traveling guitar

The very best!!! I have built several guitars according this book. All sounded great. Highly recommmending!!!!

This in my opinion is simply the best book on steel string guitar construction available. It differs from all others in that it's led by photographs and not by text, similar to a Dorling Kindersley book. There's more text than just figure captions, but it's sparse and absolutely economical: there's not an unnecessary word or digression (the author's editor was a genius and/or a total brute). Examining the photos is incredibly instructive: after a full 'read' of the book you feel almost like you've built your first guitar already, as you can see exactly what's involved with every step. This gave me enormous confidence before starting and also gave me an idea of what processes to think more about (e.g. alternatives) and what things to follow to the letter. The full size plans are excellent too- but I choose not to use them and nevertheless had no problem applying the methods to a different set of plans.The coverage is superb as well- from selecting woods to hand and power tools, to post-build set-up and pick-up installation. The author is also encouraging in that he argues that relatively few specialised tools are absolutely required, which is one of the reasons many people with the desire never even start.It's both instructional and inspirational and I return to it for both of those reasons more often than I turn to any other book on the subject (and as there aren't that many, I've got all of them on my shelf for comparison).I think it's an unsung classic - a truly under-appreciated book on the subject that quite literally shows you how it's done.