My First Cigar Box Guitar

I forget what inspired me to make a cigar box guitar, but it was fun and turned out pretty good. I have to get a recording of the sound, sounds surprisingly good. At any rate, here is how I built my first 4 stringed cigar box guitar.

I went to a local cigar store and picked out some cigar boxes, unfortunately they wanted $3 for each box. Oh well. I got a La Gloria Cubana paper cigar box, well paper for the lid and sides and cedar for the bottom.

I decided to use a 24.5" scale, which corresponds to the length between the nut and the bridge. Pictured above is the layout. I decided to use a pass through neck, so the neck goes completely through the cigar box.

After laying out the neck, the total neck length turned out to be 28".

In order to make sure the neck can hold the tension of the strings without bending to much, I sandwiched two layers of fiberglass cloth in-between two 1.5" x 0.5" pieces of polar with epoxy resin.

Its a composite neck now!

 Profile of the shaped neck.

I reduced the thickness of the neck in two places, one so that the neck pass through will not touch the lid of the cigar box in an attempt to allow for the lid to vibrate freely. I also thinned the playing part of the neck in an attempt to make the cigar box more playable.

The neck lines up flush with the cigar box lid.

Sketch of the headstock.

Headstock glued to neck.

Once I glued the headstock onto the neck, I realized that it was to thin for the tuners to fit correctly. So I glued a red oak veneer to the headstock. It makes it look nice too!

I then glued an oak fingerboard onto the neck.

I then applied a golden pecan stain and sealed the neck with polyurethane, sanded to 400 grit and glued the neck to the cigar box.

I then used my Dremel router to route the above slits into the cigar box lid for a sound hole. Unfortunately, the slits are not to straight.

I used a plastic cutting board to make a nut. I used my handy scaled engineering rulers to get equal string spacing.

I used 26 gauge zinc plated steel, lightly sanded to make a rustic looking tail piece. The two big holes are for screws to secure the tail piece to the cigar box. The four smaller holes are for the strings to be fished through.

It's assembled! It just needs strings and a bridge!

Strung!

I have been experimenting with bridge materials. I have tried a bolt and the cutting board plastic. So far I think I like the cutting board plastic best but I still want to try oak.