Made to mark a milestone

Poor in pocket - Rich in time

I hankered after giving my son a shiny new guitar for his 21st birthday. But come the day, finding myself poor in pocket yet rich in time, had to settle for making him one instead. With no idea how to play guitar let alone build one, I set about making an instrument from whatever I could find - the kind of stuff that should have been buried or burned years ago.

Old tradition

In the Southern States, early blues players would use old timber, nails, fencing wire and whatever else they could lay their hands on. Out of it all would come not just a homespun guitar, but some of the greatest musical development the world has yet heard – The Blues.






Even now there’s a great community of woodshed guitar builders who knock up wondrous instruments from all but nothing. Just type Diddley-bo into a search engine, or Cigar-box guitars and you’ll find yourself tuning into another world.

History

I started thinking that I wanted the parts of the guitar itself to have some significance. For it to carry some history in its fabric, so that when my son picked it up, it wasn’t ‘new’ but was somehow passed down - lived in. Already carrying its own song. 

The Body

First up I got hold of an old 1,000ft 35mm motion-picture film can to use as the guitar body. My Grandfather used to screen 35mm films to the troops and also shot 16mm. I myself used to load and shoot 16mm and 35mm years ago before tape and digital took over in the film and TV industry.

The Neck

Looking for a neck led me to walks in the local beech woods for seasoned timber, and rummaging in the garage where I found some old wooden banana import boxes from the family’s banana merchant days, but I just couldn’t find anything suitable.




Then, leaning against the woodpile at my Dad’s place I found the old white-oak axe-handle. It was waiting to be sawn in half and burned.








It had long since lost its head and the end was rotten through. My dad had chopped wood with that axe and so had I in years gone by. But that was long ago and this axe shaft was good for nothing, redundant – just like the old film can.

Blues Harmonica Bridge

An old, unplayable Mandolin my Grandfather had brought home donkey’s years ago would be cannibalized for use in a string-tree, and my cherished Seydel Big Six blues harmonica would be sacrificed as a bridge. Guitar and harmonica hadn't sat this close since the days of  Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee.

I had a little key ring harmonica too that would serve as a string-tree cover plate, and some old harmonica reed-plate screws worked well as fret markers. 

An old bullet casing I’d hoarded turned into a volume control knob with attitude and ironically an old bolt worked out just fine as a nut.

Sculptural

I wanted to keep the sculptural quality of the axe-handle so quite a lot of time was spent rigging the tuning posts on the back, with the strings going through the handle. Doing this meant that the depth and curve of the handle could be retained.





In the end though, the Mandolin pegs couldn’t take the strain and I resigned myself to the fact that the handle would have to be sawn down so the pegs could penetrate through the wood in the conventional way.

'Wrong-ended'

This would wreck the sculptural quality of the handle though. A couple of days later as I sat in the stillness of a Quaker meeting, the thought of reversing the strings and placing the tuning pegs at the wrong end of the neck came to me.

This meant that the base end of the shaft could be cut to house the pegs and thus save the sculptural shape of the axe-handle. It’s quirky for sure, but I love it.














One of my son’s old football medals decorates the back of the body and around the edge of the tin is a length of camera tape.

This is what camera tape is actually for – taping the can together once the exposed film is safely inside. You'd then write on the tape what the film was, the date and stuff.

I found a quote from Jack Kerouac’s 'On The Road'. Sam had just written his graduation thesis on the Beat Poets and this line seemed about right:

“At the dividing line
between the East of my youth
and the West of my future."

Jack Kerouac

The guitar strap is an old American trouser belt. It has a great colour and a good beat-up look that blends well. It fixes with a camera strap buckle to a guitar strap button at one end and an eyebolt at the other.








That eyebolt for the strap is polished steel and is good for hanging up the guitar too.






The centre plate of the film-can body has a signature S-shaped motif designed by Sam's sister  Jess – the illustrator.







I had a local steel fabricator drill out the holes and make a steel insert to deepen the can by an inch or so.

The three strings thread thru the neck, up and over the bolt before running down the neck to the harmonica bridge and tuning pegs. I'm giving it to him with open-D tuning - that's d.a.d. and seems like a subtle way of signing it over.

The 'S' holes act as vents for the sound to reverberate through and the Piezo pick-up is sunk into the wooden handle where it runs through inside the can.

I painted the handle end with a white undercoat and topcoat of red oxide - axes are often sold with red handles - then I sanded it back a bit to keep its worn through look.

Knowing that the first thing he'll do is lose the slide, there's a sweet little built-in slide holder that sits snug under the neck. 

Big hearted

I’m so happy with the design elements and materials. Also that fresh purpose has been given to long redundant items that once worked hard but were now destined for the tip. Who'd of thought they'd find a new life making music. To my eye it’s a thing of great beauty and hope. But the one thing without which this guitar could never have taken shape remains invisible – the help of a friend.

When my harp-playing buddy Aron Azza Woodall heard I was after a box-guitar he offered to help and his paws are all over this build. He not only leant me his expertise, patience, tools and time, but also quickly recognized that this was a labour of love and he put his big heart and soul right into it. We had a great time slowly working out how to make this guitar over five days and plenty of brews.



All yours Sam!

Happy 21st Sam

See the build photos