Classical Guitar Building and Repair Books and Resources

Classical Guitar Making: A Modern Approach to Traditional Design

What a thrill for any musician: playing a fine-sounding instrument that he or she has lovingly crafted from scratch. With this richly illustrated manual, well-known luthier and guitarist John Bogdanovich shows exactly how to build that first, beautiful guitar, using traditional, time-tested methods.

All that’s required are basic woodworking techniques and a minimally equipped shop. Bogdanovich discusses the anatomy of the guitar, sound, choosing an instrument, selecting woods, templates and molds, and preparation. In more than 300 pages of text, he painstakingly lays out the details of construction, from assembling the neck and sides to installing the fingerboard and bridge.

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Classic Guitar Construction

For many years this manual for classical guitar construction was the only resource available to those interested in lutherie. Though not as complete as some of the modern guides, this book will offer a variety of useful techniques not found elsewhere. It is not recommended as a complete tutorial on guitarmaking.

Mr. Sloane refers to the techniques of many of the great Spanish luthiers when describing his methods. 96 pages, over 120 diagrams and high quality black and white photographs, softbound.

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Guitar Building Series – Carving the Classical Guitar Neck

The two DVD, 2.5 hour set covers the complete the entire process of carving the classical guitar neck from scratch using basic hand tools and a 10″ band saw. The video begins with a plank of mahogany and concludes with a finished neck ready for installation.

You can view selected clips of this DVD set by going to YouTube and doing a search for “Jamie Boss Guitar neck carving”. To see my other guitar building and repair DVDs on Amazon, just do a search for “Jamie Boss” under DVDs.

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Guitar Building Series – Building the Classical Guitar Soundboard

A comprehensive 3 DVD, 2.5 hour demonstration of how to build a classical guitar soundboard including thinning, gluing the soundboard halves, cutting the rosette channel, cutting the sound hole, making, positioning, shaping and gluing the braces and fan struts and gluing the neck to the soundboard. All of the special hand tools and fixtures are covered in great detail.

You can view selected video clips of these DVDs by going to YouTube and doing a search for “Jamie Boss soundboard”. To see our other guitar building and repair DVDs on Amazon, just do a search for “Jamie Boss” under Movies and TV.

This DVD set will show you how build the classical guitar soundboard from scratch and how to attach the neck. Basic carpentry skills and knowledge are required. Filmed at my guitar building school in Milford, Connecticut, the entire process is broken down to each individual step with close-ups and instructional graphics. The set includes three DVDs, 2 1/2 hours in length.

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