My road to building my first instrument

Hello steemians and welcome to my first blog entry ever! Before jumping into my story I want to apologise for every mistake I'll make and my weird type of writing - like you'll probably notice, english is not my native tongue ;) (Please feel free to correct serious mistakes!)

My name is Alexander and I study "Management of natural resources" in Saxony-Anhalt. I'm 25 years old and I love making music. After learning piano and trumpet as a child and teenager I discovered the beauty of guitars. I am now learning and playing passionately different types of the guitar for three years. One and a half year ago I bought my first electric guitar - a Randy Rhoads RX10D by Jackson.

Unfortunately is this guitar basically used for metal which is not my preferred genre - mostly due to my lack of skill.

So I had the crazy idea of building my own guitar. Because I was born with two left hands (righty here) I tried to search for a luthier who is willing to accompany me on my journey and, lucky me, I found one. Before we could start, I had to design the body and the matching headstock.

Important note:

If you want to build your own instrument which is matching your expectations search for a professional who will guide you! There are many things you'll have to be aware of to get the result you want.

As you can see in those pictures my design for the body is strongly inspired by the stunning Telecaster with a subtle hint to a Les Paul. But this wasn't enough because I wanted to have the brilliant high notes and bluesy sound of a Strat. To achieve this symbiosis I chose 3 single coil pickups by Duesenberg. I'll post another article about the technical specifics after the guitar is finished.

In strong opposition to the fabrically build Fender standard guitars I decided to use a very heavy wood for my body - mahagony.

For the neck I used a beautiful and very light maple wood.

In between the maplepieces I glued two thin stripes of ebony and one thicker piece of an exotic purple amaranth wood (Peltogyne venosa).

Because I wasn't too satisfied with the plain look of mahagony I decided to do something fancy (and perhaps pretty extravagant). A little side note here: you should definitely do the same to give your guitar a unique touch. I guess that's the main point in building your own instrument ;)

I picked a cat strip. And not any cat strip besides this. It had to be spalted maple.

Shortly afterwards I was in deep despair because of my choice. Spalted wood is unbelievable hard to work with. Spalting is a wood coloration caused by fungi which results in a very differing toughness. The soft parts will often break away and the solid ones are exhausting to work on. But this problem occured not until it was already to late.

After picking the materials I had some mill-cutting and glueing to do.

After waiting for two days I was ready get rid of the overhanging parts. Because of the raw look I also had some grinding to do. And if you want to do the same as me you have to be prepared to grind a lot. An awful lot. Looking back I'll have to admit that this was the most challenging part. If you are not skilled in grinding it will drive you insane. Believe me. It will always result in a dent or any other unevenness you don't even see.

So these were my first little steps in building the guitar of my dreams. If you enjoyed the journey so far please let me know it and I'll post more! But the fatique takes its toll so I have to stop for today. Thanks for reading and the hopefully warm welcome on steemit.