Sunil Hall

Here’s the latest cigar box creation. It’s a Ukulele I made for my sister in law Veronica:

(more…)

A local cigar shop hooked me up with a bunch of cool cigar boxes. I’m making a few more 4 string slide guitars to give to friends and maybe sell. Here’s the first of the new batch. Oak neck, mahogany fingerboard, cherry tailpiece, rosewood bridge and saddles.

As you can see I used a colorful Partagas brand wood and tape box. I managed to get the intonation right on this one and it sounds a bit better then number 1. The tone is much better then I expected. Dark and twangy. This will sound mean with some distortion!

The Strat style headstock has an image I cut from the inside of the box.

The Electric Guitar Project got me really interested in making musical instruments. I hope to make a nice acoustic guitar from scratch someday, but I have a lot to learn about building necks and tuning for good tone etc.

To gain experience I decided to make a 4 string cigar box slide guitar. This is the kind of home made instrument delta blues musicians would play back in the 20′s and 30′s. I figured it would be a good starting place to learn about neck building because the stresses are less with only 4 strings and since it is a slide guitar my fretting doesn’t have to be perfect.

Lydia let me have an old cigar box she used to use to display rings. the top was useless since she had cut a window in it, so I routed it off and glued on a spruce soundboard I have lying around. The neck is made of red oak from a local hardware store and runs through the body. The nut and saddle are rosewood and the fingerboard is cherry.

Here it is. It sounds pretty cool. kind of  twangy. Very bluesy.

(more…)

Ive been building this flat top Les Paul style guitar for the last few months. A recent injury kept me out of work for a while so I’ve had some time to finish it up. So here it is, Its wired up and sounds good! The hollow body is very similar to a Gibson, though its not based on any plans. Its a little narrower and deeper then a real LP I think. it would be interesting to compare the two side by side but I don’t have one. My giant, exaggerated F-holes and string-through-body tailpiece help it stand out as well. The back and sides are made from Poplar and the top is an Engleman Spruce acoustic guitar soundboard.

(more…)

I’ve been able to make some progress on this project since my zipline related mishap. I’m only able to do a little at a time before I need to crash out on the couch with an ice pack, but it gives me something to look forward to and I don’t feel completely useless.

(more…)

Unfortunately I haven’t had a lot of free time to work on projects outside of work lately so I haven’t had much to post about. I have made some progress with the guitar I’m building. I picked up a few pieces of Engleman spruce to use as a top. They actually are intended for use as a mandolin soundboard, but the dimensions were right for my project and they were cheap.

They came in a book-matched set. Nothing exotic, just plain old spruce with out much flame. Still I love the look of natural wood. I’m thinking about using a transparent finish on the top. First things first though.

(more…)

Here are a couple of my current projects:

Sea Ghost

David asked me about this piece a while back so here’s an update. One of my early mechanical pieces was a of a ship sailing above a turbulent sea. I had first set out to see if I could create a believable wave motion. After a few different tries I found something I liked. The design allowed me to add the secondary action of a boat on the surface of the waves. The finished piece was pretty cool but unfortunately this was before I learned to solder properly and the copper tubing I used was not quite rigid enough. After a series of breakdowns and some rough handling during a move the piece collapsed. I don’t think I ever got a photo or video of it intact. Well, I’m currently rebuilding it with brass structural pieces instead of copper and a few design changes. Currently its about thirty percent done.

The waves have been retained from the original but everything else is new.

(more…)