Many musicians yearn to be different and unique and although a custom guitar stand might not improve their guitar playing techniques it will certainly be an eye-catching accessory. Custom guitar stands are not new but they are somewhat rare, at least compared to the hundreds of thousands of off-the-shelf versions that abound in the music industry.
In my case we are taking what, at first blush, appears to be the top end cut off Fender Stratocaster guitar, and manufactured into a guitar stand, and that is what it is supposed to look like.
Unable to find any kind of a plan for this project, I did start off my making a very rough mock-up to get some ideas of angles and shapes. I discovered that the backbone of the stand in the shape of an inverted "Y" was an easy and strong solution.
I started off with some 3/4" thick boards and trimed them to 2" in width. The angle of the legs as they attached to the upright piece was at 30 degrees. I also took the time to cut a rear brace for the stand. The angle as it attached to the back was closer to 60 degrees, but all these angles can also depend on the guitar you are wanting to make the stand for. If it is deep acoustic guitar compared to much thinner solid body electric there can be differences in angles and settings. You may need to determine some of these yourself based on your situation.
I attached my legs to my upright using dowels. They are strong, easy to use, make an excellent joint and most of all are hidden. While those joints dried and hardened I went on to make the arms that will hold the guitar. In my case I ended up drawing my own that was in the "style" of a Fender Stratocaster, but a bit larger in size. I made pattern from 1/4" hardboard that would also be used as my pattern when I came time to making the arms identical. I first drew a line around the pattern and rough cut it within about 1/16 of an inch on my bandsaw. I then took this rough cut and using double sided tape, attached it to the pattern and using a patterning bit on my router table, cut each arm identical to the pattern. I could have just used the rough cutting from the bandsaw and sanded them down, but using the patterning bit just saved me a lot of time sanding.
To figure out the angle at which the arms that hold the guitar would be, I had to have a working stand. I then held the arms against the up-right stand to figure out that angle. I cut mine on my sliding mitre saw but you NEED TO BE CAREFUL when you do this. It's best to build a small jig to hold these arms because of the odd shape. Another, safer alternative might be to cut them on a bandsaw then sand the ends flat.
The arms also need to have the detail of tuning pegs. I tried to purchase something like thumb-screws but could not find any suitable so ended up with 2 sizes of dowel and made my own as shown in the video. Again, working with small pieces can be dangerous so make sure you work safely and are not hold small pieces with your hands close to spinning blades.
I painted the tuning pegs black and the shafts white and even took the advice of an airbrush artist I once knew who told me that white paint with a small thin line or two will emulate chrome much better than silver paint.
Finding where the arms would attach to the main stand was a bit of a challenge. Again this can depend on what guitar you are making this for. As you can see in the video I placed a straight edge piece across the bottom of the stand to make sure that each arm would be evenly placed, then I cut 2 dowel holes in the backs of each arm. With these dowels cut in the backs of the arm, I could then insert a "dowel finder" in the top hole and make an indentation that would give me the location of the top hole. The second hole was made using my Dowelmax jig with the top hole aligned with the Dowelmax locator pin. The locator pin goes through one hole in the Dowelmax then into the top hole just drilled, then the next hole is drilled using the Dowelmax jig for a perfect alignment.
The final step is the assembly of the arms into the upright base and securing the dowels with glue and presto ... it's done, a cool looking, unique guitar stand that will be the envy of many musicians and artists.
Copyright Colin Knecht
woodworkweb.com