The original directions I found for building a milk carton guitar came from Karen Latchana Kenney's book Cool Rock Music, but she deserves none of the blame for my results.
Our first attempt to build one of these guitars came out like this:
We used a lemonade carton, a plank of pine instead of a yardstick, and added multiple strings --
30lb and 50lb fishing line and one genuine guitar string. We found that the wood bent pretty easily under the tension of the strings,
the screw eyes also did not hold well to the wood with that much tension,
and the carton itself ripped if not handled gently.
We also tried a few variations on the design, using different items for sound boxes, including a cigar box:
and a coffee can:
The advantage of the milk or juice carton was that the top was slanted away from the strings by design, and the ridge at the top was an excellent bridge. For the cigar box variation we crafted a bridge from a bamboo chopstick:
But the coffee container needed an even higher bridge, which we created from some scrap wood:
In both cases, the bridges had to be glued in place or else they slipped free. Anyone attempting these variations will have to factor in the drying time for the glue.
We tried using a cheap yardstick, as directed in Kenney's book, but the wood split easily, and in one case broke completely in half where the stick had a seam. Additionally, wooden yardsticks are harder to find than they used to be (no local hardware stores offered them!) and the cheap ones were worth what we paid -- not much.
We built approximately 40 milk carton guitars at Art Camp. The older students (ages 9-12) enjoyed discussing the parts of the guitar and ideas for improving on them, and were quite pleased with their results!
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(By the way... I know I've been doing too much transcription when I automatically capitalize Item, as in "Agenda Item," and then catch myself...)
(a pun I couldn't resist -- sorry)
A local dairy business donated some cartons to us, but many of the kids preferred the juice containers, which spared us having to cut sound holes.
Let the kids know they have learned a craft that is old and can be honed.
Harder still is finding good cotton string -- my friend Debra plays washtub bass and she's always hunting for a source, worried the string she's using will break before she can secure a fresh supply.
We played a gig in Syracuse last month and the string popped out of the washtub -- we thought that was the end for her, but Galahad was there and found a way to rememdy the situation. (He's such a hero..!)
It's not too late, though, Barb -- build one now!
A friend from FB who read this suggested that we could counteract the bending of the yardstick by adding a (non0twanging) string to the back side of the stick to even-out the tension.
Wow... that is so neat...
Did you record a sample concert that you can upload here on Gather???
The coolest thing that happened: one of the boys really understood the project well enough that he was assisting his fellow students in class. He showed me some ideas on variations, so I gave him a coffee can to work with -- he built a much better coffee can guitar that night and brought it to Art Camp to show the teachers!
When are you going to offer a Summer Camp For Gather Members, Dannielle?
I'm not sure I'd want to put on a Summer Camp like that, but perhaps I'll post another how-to article if we make some of the other instruments.
Art stores like A.C. Moore and Michael's had yardsticks for about $4.50 each, which was steep, but they had metal reinforcements at the ends and might have been made of hardwood.
Because I was on a limited budget, I found 50-cent yardsticks at Wal-Mart (had to purchase 40 of them!) If you get these, watch for seams where they might break, ends that might be splitting already, and avoid sticks with knots in the wood.