Home Depot Pine 2x4 Guitar!?!?!? 

Thank you!! Back up plan!! I planned end grain block inlays to match the endgrain body. In case I decided against that I lined that knot up with the 12th. Don't remember at this point if I pointed that out elsewhere or not.

Thank you!

iamseetherfan most guitars I make have around 50-60 hours in them. That could be improved if I optimized things a bit probably. This one took about 30 probably. I was sort of in a rush to meet the deadline for that competition.

So the thing was kind of an experiment anyway. I did take several precautions knowing the limitations of the material. The neck is 2 pieces laminated, 2 quartersawn pieces. As well as a third quartersawn piece for the fingerboard. To answer your question, it's still together and playable. Although it doesn't get a lot of play. It's a conversation piece. It hangs in the room where I teach guitar at a local music store and occasionally it's brought out to show people and be played a bit. A friend of mine did borrow it and take it to a gig one time, played I think 2 songs on it, and it did fine for that. But it was never intended to be sold and used as a finished instrument or anything like that. Although you can still pull it off the wall and tune it up and jam with it any time you want. The neck hasn't warped or catastrophically failed or anything like that. Tuning stability isn't great. Pine moves a lot. That's one the reasons like is used in home building here in north America. Pine is able to move quite a lot and not break, and still support the load it's supposed to hold. It's a bendy sort of word. Which makes the tuning stability a litlle.. squishy. Just the weight of your hand can pull you several cents out of tune if you aren't careful. But it returns to pitch when you let go. But overall it's pretty much just like it was the day I finished it. And it's been tuned to pitch hanging on a wall. It is usually flat when you pull it off the wall though. Very interesting to me as I thought I'd see some sort of warping of major failure, but I haven't.

Thanks! I choose not to add any reinforcement, I seriously wanted to know what would happen. It's had 10s on it for over a year now. There is a failure slowly but surely occurring in the neck joint, but that's partially my fault, combined with the bodies grain orientation. The neck itself is doing just fine. It reacts a ton to temp change and humidity. Like a TON. The neck is touchy as well, by that I mean it takes every small push of your hand backwards or forward. You have to really watch the fretting hand or you'll sound out of tune, mostly pulling it sharp backwards to you while play. But tune it up, play for a couple hours, does just fine. It's a real conversation starter. Its hanging in the music store I teach it, real conversation starter.

Everyone that sees this guitar says that! It's different for sure. Thank you for watching!

It would have been. This was a great experiment still though. Good proof of concept. The neck has lost pitch for other reasons, but is generally stable. It can be moved easily with a bit of force with the fretting hand, the carbon fiber would alleviate that. Eventually I will get around to making an update video on this guitar to show how it's aged.

I once made a guitar out of some cheap pine from B&Q, not the greatest material for building guitars, but it held up well for the time I had it

Thank you! Have at it! It's a very fun process I hope you enjoy!

So the pine is actual doing just fine. I teach guitar and it hangs in the same room I teach in and is sort of a conversation piece. The neck is holding up just fine. No problem at all with the materials. The pitch of the strings however bends very easily with hand movement because the pine bends easily, but it has done that since it's construction. The guitar plays just fine otherwise. It's not a guitar you'd want to play every day but it holds up just fine to occasional use. There was an issue with the neck losing pitch (by pitch I mean the angle it was mounted in the body), but that was my fault and not the fault of the materials. I should have made the joint a bit bigger and maybe a bit deeper as well for more glue surface. I did a repair for that about a year after the instrument was built and that has been holding just fine. Thank you for watching and have a great day

Thanks! I wish I could dedicate more time to this now, hopefully soon I'll be able to get back in my shop more.

Video is 4 years old. The guitar has had a few tweaks but over all is still going strong. Thanks for watching!

Thank you very much! It does have some quirks, but as proof of concept... Yep! It definitely works! The pine neck gives some characteristics that are unique, things that I've never experienced with any other guitar. I hope to have time soon to do an update video now that the guitar has aged for about 6-7 months.

I would love to see that. I look forward to it.

Leo Fender's first guitars were pine. Today they would be worth a fortune to the nuts out there who just like to collect things

These literally came from my local home depot. Probably southern yellow pine. I had purchased them for another project but ended up not needing them, not a guitar related project, and they sat in my shop for several months drying and adjusting to my shop environment. I decided to use them for this when I heard about the contest.

I don't remember to be honest. But if you plan correctly I'm pretty sure you can get a body with a single 2x4. Definitely a single 2x6. I cut this into small squares but I've seen endgrain patterns with rectangular shapes as well.

So... Those 2 boards came from my local Home Depot, but they sat in my shop for probably 6-8 months before I built the guitar. During the heat of summer, in the rafters, in my un-airconditioned shop. Those boards got toasty up there I'm sure. Construction lumber will generally read about 20% moisture on a meter, but these were fairly light for their size which tells me they were pretty dry at the time I built the guitar. Probably closer to 8-10%. Also the various laminations help prevent wood movement. The body has laminations everywhere, and the neck is 2 pieces quarter sawn for the shaft with a third piece for the fingerboard also selected for the quarter sawn grain. That's the reason for the angled cut on the band saw, for the quarter sawn slice that eventually was the fingerboard. Also a principal of wood working is you get less movement from any species perpendicular to the grain with quarter sawn material. Any reason for that choice. But yes building any thing, furniture, guitars, whatever out of "green" wood will only lead to problems as the moisture leaves the wood. In this case the wood was relatively dry, and also the laminations and grain selection helped to prevent such problems. And yes you are correct. Really bad idea to buy wood from home Depot, bring it home, immediately build something with it. Especially dimensioned construction lumber.

Actually that reverse on the quarter sawn movement. Less movement ALONG the grain. Movement will be perpendicular to the grain. Either way, used in the manner I used it here leads to a more stable neck for a guitar.

@@daveydacusguitars9033 thank you for the reply! Great video. Great job!

Thank you!

Hmmm.... mine is quite sturdy. In fact the guides are a tight friction fit then locked in place with and a hex bolt, and at times they do require a hammer to adjust them. Seriously. They get stuck and need considerable nudging at times. The side guides that is. The back blade guide is a ball bearning type assembly and adjusts quite finely and accurately with a thumb wheel adjustment. My bottom guides are identical to the top ones. Only reversed. Both sets work pretty well for me. As for set up, that depends on the use at the time. Looser blade tension and a little wiggle room in the guides for squirrely cuts. Very close with all guides, but not quite touching, and a bit higher blade tension and a thicker blade for resawing. Hope that helps.

thank you! my unit, when I raise the guide the right bearing touches the blade or when I lower the guide the left touches the blade....and when I tighten to lock in, the unit ever slightly moves right... and is your table square? mine is off...

Off one direction down, the other direction up... I would say square the table and it'd fix the guide issue... but the guide is mounted to the top of the saw I think, so sqauring the table won't fix the guides... Might have to shim one side or the other or something. Maybe it took a hit over the years. The table on mine is pretty square to the blade. Not 100% sure, but I think it has an adjustment for that as well. Mine is pretty good so I've never messed with it, and actually can't remember if it has the feature or not, but many saws have the tilting feature, you might could find an adjustment for that. Definitely check for the tilting adjustment. An issue the table of my unit.. Mine has a small metal pin that goes in the end, it must be removed to change the blade. But if the pin is left out, the table wraps pretty badly. I've lost track of that pin before and had to deal with that until I found it. When I put the pin back in it flattens back out.

its an adventure, alright....thanks! great guitar btw, unique indeed!

Thanks!! I've got a 16 mo th update video as well. Showing a few details of how it aged in that amount of time. The neck body joint shows signs of failing, but the neck is pretty stable to this day. If I did it again I would definitely use reinforcement, like a carbon fiber rod or two, and I think it would benefit from a harder material for the finger board for longevity. Other than that it's still a working guitar and always a conversation starter when people see it! Thanks for watching!!

Thanks, it's taken a lot of time and energy to get it there. Some money too, but honestly feels like more time and energy. Don't be discouraged though!! My first shop had a dirt floor and a very leaky roof. The rust is still on my drill press and a few other tools from it. So I know exactly where you are coming from. Came a long way since then. Somehow the camera makes it look WAY bigger than it actually is as well. It's about 8' ×18' and needs a lot more storage which I'm currently wolrimg on. But it's good and stable and dry, I definitely enjoy my time in it.

Routed the channel early in the video, its glued under the finger board at about 3:50

It not exactly like it's not lasting.. it's just lost pitch. But then stabilized. No issues recently. It's the small neck pocket causing the issue. I'm sure stabilizing epoxy would help strength, but then you'd have issues with the glue penetrating properly at the neck joint i think. Unless you just epoxied all of it together. Or went with a bolt on design. Sound theory for sure though. Based on my observations here... probably over kill. A properly sized neck joint would be just fine I believe based on how this has acted.

It would I believe. This thing was experimental, it's been strong enough I think. But would be stronger the way you suggest.

All good ideas, and I considered 2 of them. I did make sure that the 2 piece neck was made with opposing grain, and made sure they were quarter sawn, also then the extra cut on the band saw was to ensure that the fretboard was nicely quarter sawn as well. I didn't want to use epoxies or anything else because I was genuinely curious how the wood all on it's own would perform. So I didmt really consider this at all. Its impressed me really how well it's done. I always look for ways to improve, so I'll always mention something I would do different next time, but it's been good overall. The rods for reinforcement I considered. But also I didn't want to maybe be disqualified over that. Not that it matter, I think the guys who did this contest never even saw this guitar. I watched thier summary videos and it was never mentioned or pictured at all so... oh well I guess. Thanks for the comment! And some good solid ideas really if I were to do this again, or if anyone wants to replicate the concept without constraints.

Yeah to be honest this was more or less thrown together. I put in about half the hours of a typical custom build. I was genuinely curious how the pine was going to perform. Sound, stability, all of that. I wasn't as meticulous on details. The plan was to meet the challenge requirements, make a good playing guitar that was fully playable, looks.... I wasn't as concerned with. I thought the end grain thing would be cool, but didn't give other aspects of appearance a ton of thought.

Thank you! Good luck with your build! Thank you as well for the sub! I haven't posted in a while but I'm editing a video now, should be out soon.

goood fucing mahagony

Claudio Guarnieri The entire thing was kind of an experiment in every aspect... but it's been doing just fine! I've seen other commercially sold end grain pattern bodies such as this one, they seem to hold up. For bolt on necks. Like tele bodies and such. The only thing I was worried about, and this could be a possible in the future... is the lack of long grain to long grain connection in the neck pocket.

DaveyDacusGuitars Ah! I suspected this! Thanks 4 the reply friend. Cheers

I have looked and looked and looked but can't find the title or artist for you.. I can tell you it's from the RU-vid free library for creators. .. but unfortunately that's all I can tell you.... anyone has access to it, and it's free, if you can just find it!! Sorry!!! I've also lost all this data so I can't go back and look it up that way..

+MYdjANDkaraoke Hello! Thank you for the comment! I seriously wasn't sure how this thing would turn out! It ended up better than I could have hoped for given the materials I started with. For the sound I'm playing through a Crate vtx-200 solid-state stereo effects amp. I can't remember exactly but it sounds like a bit of delay, reverb, and a slight amount of chorus. The amp is a good solid state amp to hear in person. It has 2 twelve inch speakers, and the effects bounce between the two. Very cool in person. Difficult to reproduce recorded with a single mic. As for the sound you hear however, that may not be exactly what you hear in person. Recording varies greatly, and you might have heard a very different sound had my recording mic been placed just a small bit differently. The pickups in the guitar are some sort of older DiMarzio in the bridge and a Gretch neck pickup that is p90ish. Honestly just some that I had around from a replacement for a customer, they didn't want to take those when I was done putting their new pickups in. The pine neck I believe is quite significant to the sound this guitar has. I suppose the body as well although I think neck construction is more significant. I've played plenty of guitars while repairing and have probably been able to handle a wider variety than most. Pine acts very differently from other woods, probably mainly because it is a soft wood. The only way I know to describe it is kind of a natural compression effect. It's like the soft wood is only going to give you some much. I don't recommend using pine however for a neck without farther reinforcing it. Maybe titanium of carbon fiber support rods as well as the truss rod. This guitar returns to the same state of tuning each time, however playing it on a strap you have to really watch how much force you apply to the neck as it easily pulls sharp or pushes flat. Any custom built guitar I would say you can expect to pay a minimum of $1500-$2000 for the completed guitar with a more simple construction like a flat body tele style. More depending on features like inlays, body carves, or anything else you would want. Parts and materials would be selected better than they were for this build, higher quality pine, higher quality parts and electronics etc.. And many part of this build were quite rushed to meet a deadline. You could likely part one together using modern cnc made necks or bodies for around maybe $500-$700 depending on how high the quality you chose to purchase. For instance an eBay neck vs a Warmoth neck. And you can count on $100-$150 luthiers service for someone to fully assemble the guitar ready for you to use. I think that'd be about the fee in my area which is the southeastern us. And that's buying a prefinished body. If you go the parts caster way Warmoth is top of the line licensed replacement strat and tele parts I would say. Especially necks. They will arrive ready to play. Otherwise allparts, wd, or mighty mite parts tend to be very close in quality, and sometimes require extra fitting, adding to luthier fees later. Such as possibly needing the frets dressed to play buzz free. I wish you luck on your quest for tone!! We are all in search of something!

Thanks for getting back to me! I think I have a Crate VTX-200 too, but it has a touchy volume knob and back solder joint so I had to pound it on the top every now and again when the volume cut out. I just keep it around but I haven't played on it in years. That's not a bad price for a custom guitar but I think I'm going to part one out first to see if I even like the sound of the pine guitars. If I decide to go better build after though for the price though, I think I'd rather have you build one than Warmoth. I priced a few on there and after it's all said and done, the prices would be about the same as what your estimates would be.

Stephen Kerekes All the songs are from the you tube free access library. I had to look it up, it is titled "End of Summer" and the artist is listed as "The 126ers" Thanks for watching!

Not to my knowledge. I know the last name isn't common, but I have heard of about 3 different groups in a couple different states that I know of. I don't recall a Donnie.

@@daveydacusguitars9033 The Donnie Dacus I was referring to was a former lead guitarist of Chicago, he replaced Terry Kath.....I was just trying my chances hehehehehehe.....

Bobby Wolfe Is Jesus a mexican carpenter homie Bobby ? See kids u learn a lot in this videos, homie Bobby can u give us jesus phone number to get the pine with those lines that looks so trippy when u r hi

Clever........Its about as clever as using the word "hi" for "high". This is not nitpicking as you left two letters completely out. I would have let it go but your sentence made no sense and you capitalized "Jesus" at first and then just forgot proper nouns being capitalized mid-sentence and then capitalized "Bobby" right next to the name "Jesus". It was like reading a sentence written by someone who had an aneurysm right in the middle of typing. But then again couldn't expect much from someone who forgot to capitalize their own last name as it is written in your screen name. What was it failure to attend or failure to understand or both, cause I grasped that shit on accident sleeping halfway through English..........Oh I forgot only your first name is American so I guess your a half in half out kind of guy and I mean that literally. Do these phrases and letters scare you? INS or green card. Who named you "Dave Ortiz" that is a generic American first name and a generic Mexican last name. Guess it could have been worse and been "Jose' Ortiz" but I figure you probably have like 13 cousins 8 brothers and 2 sisters all named "Jose' ", so "Dave" sounds less brown.

I'm not near a scale right now, but it's about the as a medium weight American strat. So fairly light. At some point in the future I will do an update video on this thing, it's almost a year old now. I will be sure to include the weight as well.

DaveyDacusGuitars I'll look forward to that thanks

Also thank you for the compliment!

Um..... hopefully one day I will have time to assemble something more detailed for those interested. All the footage I have remaining however is the current RU-vid video, so maybe I can just narrate over that for some more details. Or include new footage using the completed guitar... . Eventually I will work something up. Can't really give you a time frame though..

DaveyDacusGuitars that's all good, do you know a good way to seal up that endgrain for a really smooth finish? I want to do a sunburst with stain.

Usually stain is applied before sealer.. would be very difficult with end grain I think. It's likely to come out very blotchy over a span as big as a guitar body. If you are building something with an end grain body sillmilar and want a burst over it, I'd recommend sealingeverything with basically any sealer, then leveling the sealer, start color coats after, then top coats of gloss or satin, or semi gloss, what ever you choose. The key to the smooth finish thing is building up costs until the top surface is level. End grain is a pain. It's a real finishing nightmare.

DaveyDacusGuitars thanks! I appreciate the tips!!