Wilson Burnham Guitars

My latest guitar has a European Spruce top, Canadian Cypress back and sides, Honduran Mahogany neck, Macassar Ebony fret board and bindings and an East Indian Rosewood bridge. Scale length is 654mm and the fret board a 20th fret. Body length is 490mm, body depth at heel is 100mm, body depth at end block is 106mm. Width at nut is 52mm, width at 12th fret is 62mm, string spacing at bridge is 59.5mm. I completed the French polish last week and will start the final rub out on June 7, 2021, the guitar will be set up with strings the week of June 14, 2021. I used buttonlac shellac to French polish this guitar, buttonlac is a tougher version of shellac and was once used to coat bowling alley lanes! If the shellac is tough enough to stand up to the abuse of a bowling ball, it should withstand use by a guitarist! The bindings are Macassar ebony and are doubled up, meaning I used two strips of ebony to make a wider than usual binding for the guitar. This is a technique that was popularized by th

I was looking at a blog post of mine from eight years ago, Basic Hand Tool Kit for Making a Classical Guitar, Revised and saw that I have made a few changes in my tool kit. Here are some of the changes and my current recommendations for someone who wants to make their first guitar. I still recommend purchasing or borrowing one of the following books on guitar construction, but choose only one ! Pick one book and make a guitar using that book and that book only! Using more that one book at a time will do nothing but confuse you! I speak from experience! Once you complete your first three guitars then, and only then should you purchase the other book. Guitar Making: Tradition and Technology, by William Cumpiano and Jonathan Natelson or Making Master Guitars, by Roy Courtnall Better yet, skip buying a book and find a guitar making course here in the United States or aboard. There are many such courses available today that weren't available when I started this journey thirty years