Plans

OK, so enough with the background. Time to actually start doing something. I had already decided I wanted to make a guitar and I had my mind set on a Strat. First thing I needed was to get my hands on a reference Strat-like guitar.

It's not hard to get your hands on a Strat copy, and right enough, a friend of a friend happened to have one. I borrowed it and drew an outline around it on a big piece of paper.


Doing this on paper was a bad move, I now realise. A much better option would have been to trace it onto card. In fact, if you're really serious about this, tracing it onto a piece of thin wood would be even better.

This is probably a good time to mention that I was doing this on a fairly limited budget, but more importantly without access to a workshop or many tools. In fact the whole purpose of this blog is to show you that it is possible to make your own Strat copy with very few tools. More on that later.

OK, so now I had my outline and a few measurements. The next thing was to find a nice big bit of wood. As it happened, the same friend of a friend worked in the timber industry and was able to source me some.

Now I had to figure out which wood to ask for.