Last winter my friend Nels made a cigar box guitar in our Az. shop and it sounded really good. So I thought I'd try a hand at it – learning a lot from Nels along the way. To start, I needed a cigar box and my friend Michael in the park is never without a cigar and he donated a box to me. I did all the work in my home shop where I have my own machines for cutting metal, etc.The box is just held together on the corners with paper so I added some 5/16” box elder wood for a liner. The neck is made from sycamore. When I went to the wood room looking for a piece long enough , this 1 1/2” thick sycamore board said ” pick me, pick me” ! The fret board is Brazillian rosewood and the nut and bridge are made of African blackwood. The marking dots in the fretboard are maple.I wanted it to be along the line of a Fender guitar so I slanted the top end of the neck and almost screwed up with the top tuner right at the top end. This project took a lot longer because of setbacks. The right hand tuners came in left hand , the first Humbucker pickup came with a big dent on the edge of the raised portion, and the pickup volume and tone potentiometers had no knobs. I turned the knobs out of black nylon with a white nylon dot insert. I also made stainless steel grommets for the bottom of the neck where the strings are secured.It is tuned to G-D-G and finished with Danish oil and satin lacquerCheers, JimI took a few shots in progress along the way:
Last winter my friend Nels made a cigar box guitar in our Az. shop and it sounded really good. So I thought I'd try a hand at it – learning a lot from Nels along the way. To start, I needed a cigar box and my friend Michael in the park is never without a cigar and he donated a box to me. I did all the work in my home shop where I have my own machines for cutting metal, etc.The box is just held together on the corners with paper so I added some 5/16” box elder wood for a liner. The neck is made from sycamore. When I went to the wood room looking for a piece long enough , this 1 1/2” thick sycamore board said ” pick me, pick me” ! 
