'Rare Bird'

My friend Ed Paxton, owner of Woodland Cigar Company in Delaware, Ohio, asked me to build a guitar for him.  The only proviso was that it must be made from a Rare & Fine (that's the cigar brand) cigar box he would provide, which I really wanted for my own use.  But, what to heck, Ed is my friend, and that came before staking a claim for the box.

The 'Rare Bird' is a four-string guitar with a scarf joint headstock with Spanish cedar lamination, walnut neck and leopardwood fretboard.  The nut and saddle are hand formed from Corian, and the bridge and tailstock are leopardwood.  Open back geared tuners provide tension to the D, G, B, e strings from a standard set of 10-47 ga. acoustic, which are tuned to match.  The magnetic pickup is a TotalRojo design handmade with leopardwood bobbin top.

This is a very simple and straight forward build to accentuate the beautiful box.  I added small latches to the side to keep the box closed, since it comes without the usual snap tabs, but that's it,other than an output jack and strap button on the back end.