Norbertocaster, part 1: intro, wood and tools

norbertocaster (build 1)

Started: July 15, 2025 • Ended: September 13, 2025

I wanted to build a guitar for a few reasons. First of all, I just love playing instruments — especially guitars. I also have this fascination with woodworking. I can spend hours watching people on YouTube shape, sand, and assemble projects out of raw wood. It always looked so satisfying, and I wanted to try it myself.

But there was another push. The quality of guitars on the market today, especially for the price, is often disappointing. I even ordered three PRS guitars, expecting something great, and all turned out to be underwhelming in quality. At that point, I figured: why not build one myself?

As my friend jokingly put it:

He was pissed off by PRS guitar quality — so he decided to build his own.

And that’s exactly how this project started: part passion, part curiosity, and part frustration.

Welcome to my first guitar build as a total beginner. This is more of a diary than a guide — I’m sharing what I tried, what failed, and the little victories along the way.

The wood

From the very beginning, I knew I wanted to build a Telecaster-style guitar. The reason was simple: it’s one of the easiest and least complicated shapes. For a first build, I wanted something that would let me focus on learning the process, making mistakes, and figuring things out step by step.

I already had some experience with this kind of guitar, since I owned a Harley Benton TE-52. I had even modified it with upgraded electronics and hardware, so I was a little familiar with how Telecasters are put together. It felt like the perfect starting point.

The biggest challenge at first, though, was finding the right wood. I had no idea where to get proper guitar-making wood. Luckily, a colleague from my previous job turned out to be surprisingly well-connected in the Polish luthier scene. He shared some contacts, and just a few days later, I had raw wood in my hands — ready to be transformed into a guitar.

The wood I’m using for this build:

• alder for the body — as you can see in the photo, there are already two pieces glued together, so I saved a lot of time on this step (thanks to the seller who did it for me).
• rosewood for the fretboard.
• curly maple for the neck.

Every piece of wood has already been cut to its desired height.

This was the first moment when I realized a few important things:

• The guy who sold me the wood offered to cut the fret slots for a very small fee. I’m really glad I said “ok”, because doing it myself without proper tools could have easily ended in frustration — or worse, a broken fretboard. My advice: if you have the chance, let someone more experienced handle this part.
• Looking back, I would also ask to have the rough shape of the guitar body and neck cut as well, if that option was available. At the time, I wanted to do it myself later — but in hindsight, starting with those cuts done might have saved me a lot of work.

The tools

Obviously, when you plan to do some woodworking, you need some tools, right? The problem was — I basically started with zero. Apart from a hand drill and a hammer (which aren’t exactly woodworking tools), I had nothing.

So I did what everyone does — went down the YouTube rabbit hole. I started watching videos on what you actually need to build a guitar, and this one in particular saved me a lot of time: How To Build Your First Guitar: the ULTIMATE GUIDE FOR NON WOODWORKERS.

At first, I decided to go all in with just hand tools (silly me). My plan was to buy them one by one, only when needed, and learn what could be done better along the way. The first two tools I bought were a japanese saw and a shinto rasp — both essential for shaping the body and the neck.