I noticed a thrown-out 20 inch paint mixing stick in our huge building material dumpster… took a knife to get most of the paint off, finished that process with a belt sander and flexed it a bit. Seems it will hold up and only slightly bow if you use the right gauge guitar string. Hey- don’t laugh, this size paint stirrer costs between 60 cents and 1.25 USD 🙂 The cost of necks these days!! Okay, you can laugh. The box was also a freebie given to me with a batch of ’em.
A few years ago a kind friend gave me a cardboard box of parts including a LOT of wound acoustic strings, all somewhere around (guessing) .024 or .032 size, and they seem to hold up well so I often use them for these little one-string slide guitars (known as diddley bows).
Then I had in my large bunch of boxes an old but sturdy cardboard Dutch Masters cigar box. Inspiration: a paint stir stick cigarbox guitar. She sounds truly amazing acoustically. Ya just never know until you build and try ’em!
My paint-stick git is just under 21 inches long tip-to-tip. She’s 1 3/4 in. thick. The box is 9 1/2 in. long x 5 7/8 in. wide.
The scale from bridge to eyebolt tuner (no typical nut needed) is just over 18 1/2 inches.
Currently it’s tuned to F. Lovin’ this little thing!
I’ll post a song this git inspired via my personal Facebook page later tonight. Sorry if you’re not already part of that, but sometime I’ll likely do a personal YouTube site where anyone can see/hear some of this sort of build of mine.
Well, the lyrics were written a while back but the music just popped out of this diddley bow the first time I played it.
As always, thanks for stopping by! -Glenn
That is really cool! Paint stick doesn’t bend?
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Thanks Jim, fun. No, only slight bend and a lot of it is inside the box, just one string and that not super heavy gauge so all this means it works and holds tune well. -Glenn
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