I made a guide for the Jig-saw to follow. This time I thought I had it licked though. Sadly ( as I learned on my last project) a jigsaw isn't very useful when you want to remove large swaths of wood at a go and get it done with a finished edge. This dislike of circular saws extends to table saws and even colors my opinion of chop/miter saws and routers. I don't like things that can remove digits with ease. As you can see in the above picture the first wing segments have been glued to the body. The bits I cut off are going to be sliced, diced, and glued to the main body and turned into wings.
To make the wings I first needed to cut out the shape of the neck/fretboard from the raw wood.
Now it's all about cutting and economy.Īs you might have been able to see from my " plans" in the last post - this lap-steel is going to have wings. So, I bought my wood - $30 for the two peices and I have an idea for how I want this thing to look. Which is strange to say about a lap steel - seeing as they need no frets. I also picked up a 24 by 2 inch piece of zebra-wood that was about 1/4 of an inch thick to use as the fret-board material. It had a few burn marks where the wood planer got stuck and the end had what looks like some skips by the saw that cut the face of the wood. As you may be able to see in the photo above the Walnut had some imperfections when I got it. It had a nice grain to it (burl?) and promised to be somewhat good looking when finished. So I bought a piece of 36 inch by 7 inch Walnut that was about 1 and 3/4 inches thick. I decided to build my lap steel out of walnut - mainly because the chunk of wood that I found was the nicest looking piece of wood in the store that was also the right size for what I needed. As the name suggests the instrument is placed in your lap instead of around your neck with a guitar strap and is quite often played with finger picks instead of the normal pick. It was good stuff and I've always wanted to mess around with one.įor the uninitiated - a lap steel has anywhere between 6 and 12 strings, is played with a slide (metal or glass usually) instead of your fingers, and is tuned to an open chord so that any where you place your slide on the 'fretboard' will make a useful chord. The sound was raunchy and bluesy with the right amount of growl. One of the band instuments is part Lap steel and part Zither. I was introduced to the idea of lap guitar while working at Blue Man Group in Boston. I would guess that the most 'popular' player using lap steel guitars on a regular basis today would be Ben Harper but his stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. Lap Steel guitars are also commonly used for Blues and Bluegrass (which is more my speed). However, because I have a lot of guitars already and wasn't really prepared to dive into 6-7 months of living with/creating another guitar when I have more than I can play now I decided to build something different - a lap steel guitar.įor those of you who are not familiar with Lap Steel guitars they came to prominence in the 30's, 40's and 50's centered mostly around Hawaiian and Country Music.
I love the sound and feel of my Telecaster more than any other guitar I own - and that's saying' something seeing as I own quite a few guitars. Building my first guitar was such a rewarding experience that I thought I'd try it again.