Acoustic Guitar Construction

Aloha! This is a cool forum and I'm stoked I found it. I'm trying to get started on my first acoustic kit but hit a bit of a mental road block.

During Covid I bought some cheap electric guitar kits. I found that I really enjoyed the work (I was a finish/cabinetry carpenter in a past life) but ultimately lost interest in "polishing turds" as wood quality was pretty poor, the necks were narrow, the body shapes a little off, etc. So then I bought a rosewood "Martin Kit" based on looks, but learned before building it that I don't like the sound of rosewood guitars! So next I bought some inexpensive "sawmill specials" of mahogany and walnut and a bending iron. But now I'm stuck over-thinking the thicknessing and jointing (tools and methods, etc.)

I have a small shared craft room and will do messy jobs outside, so tools have to be small and/or portable. I've been devising all these plans to use a drill press/safe-t-plane, router/sled/table, etc but I don't think those are the right process or approach. One idea that's been resonating is using a flat stone with a home-built adjustable height sanding bar to do the thicknessing, and jointing with a sanding shooting board. Maybe if I join the boards before sanding the edges will be clean enough?

I know traditionally this was all done with hand planes, and I'll consider thicknessing with a hand plane, but I want to put off the plane-jointing learning curve for later.

Anyway, thanks for reading and any advice/motivation. I'm looking forward to things finally moving along.

I was looking for ideas to bring out midrange and reduce bass and learned about rear shifted bracing. The videos I watched seem to make quite a difference! I might try that and just use the rosewood.

Welcome to the forum. Many of us on the forum started with a kit build. I think I would finish the Martin kit. Being your first guitar, you can make something that sounds good; however I am not sure you will hear the difference in the back wood used. Not that the back wood does not make a difference but there are so many other concerns in thicknessing and bracing the top that will make difference where it will overwhelm the choice of wood for the back.

I now use a drum sander for thicknessing but I used a plane and cabinet scrapper for my first. I hate to sand anymore than I have to. I do use a SafeT planer at times, it is not a bad choice.

The best Idea I have for bringing out the midrange and reducing the bass is to build a guitar more in the 00 size instead of the D size. Other than dreds most steel string guitars have great mid range and trebles and the fight is getting a good bass response.

Let us know what you are working on and post pictures as you go.

Thanks John. I've been listening to rosewood guitar samples online and some certainly sound better than others. I also found plans available for V-bracing, which I might do, as I like Taylors rosewood a bit better than Martin's.

The kit is from Blues Creek, and is a Martin OM with cutaway, spruce top, and Indian rosewood back/sides. The rosewood is pre-bent and beautiful, so it would be a shame not to use it anyway.

I also came to the same conclusion that a plane makes the most sense for thicknessing, if I were to go that route. I was more hung up on jointing with a plane, but I found a Stew Mac video where Dan joints with a router, straight edge, and a sanding bar. I can do that with my Dremel. My reservation was edge jointing with a plane and chasing concavity, which is what most online videos seem to focus on. I've used a powered jointer in the past with amazing results so the hand plane thing just seems more difficult than it needs to be.

I'll post pics as I get things going. I built the go-bar deck and made a radius dish. I need to get sticks for the deck, I guess I need to decide if I'm V-bracing or not, and see if I need different bracing material.

Don't fixate on the sound of a particular species of wood. Skilled luthiers can optimize their work to get good results from wood. The wood does not have an inherent unique sound that will show through a guitar's being made of it. And when I started building I absolutely stayed away from 'name' species; I knew that any inherent characteristics that showed up would have done so by accident and paying for a name wasn't in my budget. Same for soundboards, the headwinds are against a new builder getting superior acoustic performance by spending lots of money. Being rough-cut wood, the only quality being sold is appearance, acoustics has zero effect on price or valuation.