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Noah SpiegelmanMechanical engineering
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Project 10 / 10Hand fabrication · Instrument making

Cigar Box Guitar

Personal project

A handmade electric guitar built from a cigar box, with a hand-shaped neck, fretboard and headstock.

  • Completed
  • Mechanical
The finished cigar box guitar lying on a light wood-grain table, seen from above: a long dark fretboard with shell position markers and a pointed wooden headstock with four tuning pegs, leading down to a cigar-box body inlaid with geometric blocks of color and two guitarist silhouettes, with a wooden bridge and brass tailpiece
Fig. 01The finished guitar, neck to body.
My contribution
Design, fabrication and assembly
Tools
Laser cuttingMachiningCarpentry tools

Overview

A personal project building a playable electric guitar from a cigar box: designing and hand-shaping the neck, fretboard and headstock, calculating fret placement for accurate intonation, and assembling everything into a finished instrument.

Engineering challenge

I wanted to build a playable electric guitar from scratch, starting from a cigar box instead of a traditional guitar body.

Design process

I designed, fabricated and hand-shaped the key components — the neck, fretboard, headstock and cigar box body — using laser cutting, machining and carpentry tools.

I calculated fret placement and scale length to keep intonation accurate across the fretboard.

Testing & results

I assembled all the components into a functional instrument, with attention to precision and fit throughout.