Cigar Box Guitar

   
     Ever since I started building instruments, I have wanted to make a cigar box guitar. The cigar box guitar was originally popularized during the Great Depression when few people could buy musical instruments. Instead of abandoning music, they resorted to making their own instruments out of any available materials. These usually included broom handles, wire, and of course cigar boxes. Traditionally the cigar box guitar has three strings, but it can have as many as six and as few as one. I used A, D, and G nylon guitar strings on mine and then tuned it to an open A tuning (A, E, A).  The book Hand Made Music Factory by Mike Orr has excellent instructions on making one of these instruments. Without the use of power tools, however, his design can be hard to follow. I made some alterations as depicted below to compensate for this.

 

Note: The distance between the nut and the bridge should be 25 inches. The drawing is not to scale.