Building a guitar - part one

So - I woke up a few weeks ago with the familiar feeling that drives a man, after exhausting all possible practice strategies, to improve his learning curve by buying a new guitar which will make him a more toneful, faster, neater, sexier guitar player.

Then I went out trying out some guitars.

Quite apart from the fact that most of the stock in your average guitar shop is absolute rubbish, I noticed that all of the ones made from decent bits were priced well over £1500. That doesn't seem too steep for a quality musical instrument, until you realise that (a) the aggregate cost of buying all the high-quality bits needed to make such an instrument from various online shops comes to less than £500 and (b) the work involved in assembling said bits into a guitar is pretty minimal. You'd need a screwdriver and a soldering iron. Maybe a desk to work at. And a few strong cups of tea. What would I be paying the extra grand for? Someone who could tell the difference between good and bad componentry? I'm clearly in the wrong line of work.

So far so good. I had a strategy. But then I got over-excited and bought, not a nice guitar body, but a nice bit of wood, in no way shaped like a guitar. Unless it's Bo Diddley's guitar we're talking about.

So far I have managed to cut up my rectangular bit of ash into roughly the shape I want. Now it's time to cut some holes in it. This could result in great embarrassment on my part, since a hole in the wrong place might kill the whole project.

Looking on the bright side, I still have all my fingers.