How to make a Guitar Case // Woodworking | I Like To Make Stuff

Hey, I'm Bob and I like to make stuff. Today, I'm going to make a guitar case. I'm getting ready to move and this is probably my last project in this shop, but as I was packing things up, I realized that this guitar did not have a case. Cases are not really that expensive, but it was fun to make. It's an easy project that I think anybody can do. Let me show you how I did it. For the outsides of this case, I used three quarter inch plywood left over from a previous project. I figured out the length that I wanted the sides to be, and then cut it down on the miter saw, then took that one piece and ripped it into two pieces on the table saw. I did the same for the end pieces and then cut them to length. This is a really simple box, nothing complicated here at all, but I am going to cut the box in half, so I made sure to put the screws in the same place on all four corners, so when I run it over the table saw, I don't hit a screw. I pre-drilled and countersunk all of the holes so that the screw heads would sit flush on the outside, added glue, and drove in screws just to make a really simple box. Once I had this whole thing together, I had to make the top and the bottom, and I used eighth inch plywood for this and just cut two pieces down to size, and then glued and screwed it on to both sides of this box as well. This may not look like it's strong enough, but believe it or not, a lot of guitar cases are actually made out of cardboard. Some of the really dense cardboard can get pretty strong, so even this amount of wood is going to be that much stronger. Once I had this whole box together, I took it to the table saw and ran it over the blade on all four sides to split into two pieces. When I was putting the box together, I put in the screws thinking they're not really necessary, but they do add a little extra support, but now I realized that that was not the greatest idea, so I wanted to warn you against doing it. The reason for that is because I want to take a roundover bit, round over all of the corners of this to make it easier to wrap in the Tolex, but with the screws there, I can't do that. It's really not a big deal. I'm going to back the screws out and fill the holes with wood filler. The glue on here is strong enough to hold this thing together no problem. I just wanted to let you know so you could avoid the trouble. I went over all the corners with a half inch roundover bit, and then I took the orbital sander to smooth out all the surfaces. I used some wood filler to fill all of the screw holes and the small areas around the edge of the plywood that didn't quite meet up with the frame. After I put in all that wood filler and it dried, I just sanded it smooth. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could make the outside of this actually shaped to the guitar, but I just wanted a general case that could take a bunch of different types of guitars, but this one's being made for my Stratocaster. I just made this big enough for the guitar to right on the inside of it with a small gap around all of the edges. Originally, I was going to use half inch material around the outside. I ended up using three quarters, but I worked inward, so my interior space actually got a little bit smaller, so now the gaps around the guitar are a little bit smaller than I would like. It'll still work out. I'm just going to have to put smaller padding on the sides to keep this from rocking around. Another way I'm going to help that is to put a crossbar underneath the neck, cut out a little area for the neck to sit in so that it can't swing back and forth. Once I get the padding in from the bottom and from the top, it will hold the guitar in just fine, but having a little bit more space on the outsides would be good. Now that I've got it centered here, I'm just going to mark a spot to put a brace underneath the neck. Then I'm going to mark where I need to cut out a little slot for the neck to fit. I'll cut out that little groove for the neck using the bandsaw, and then I'll trim it up just to make sure that it fits really nicely. I also have to account for the fact that everything on the inside of this case is going to be covered with a really thin velvet. It's not going to make a huge difference, it's just something to think about because all of these things will be getting a little bit tighter. I did a couple of rounds of sanding and fitting to make sure that the neck fit really snugly inside this piece. I sanded it smooth after that, and then it was time to move on to the foam. I used some 1 inch upholstery foam to line the inside of this case. This stuff can be kind of expensive, but a lot of the fabric stores have coupons on their website up to 50% off. Look there if you're going to buy it. This stuff cuts great with a sharp knife or a rotary cutter. The piece of foam that went in the top is really straightforward because I just measured the inside dimensions, but the main part of the case is a little bit different because I want the foam to wrap up around the guitar so it doesn't bump into the wood on the sides. So all I have to do for that is measure the width of this, the height of the side, and double that side height. I don't really need any padding up against this divider, but I do need it down here, so for this dimension I'm just going to add the height here and not on this side. I found that cutting along a metal ruler made this stuff a lot easier to get through with a knife. I crammed this piece into the case and made a mark in the corners where the corners folded up. Then I cut away the corner piece so that it would fold up without overlapping itself. Then it was time to test fit it to make sure that the guitar wouldn't slide around. It held perfectly in place. Next was the fun part, wrapping the whole thing in orange. Now this stuff is called Tolex and it's really common. People use it to wrap guitar cases and guitar amps all of the time. It's kind of like vinyl, but the back has a little bit of a material on it. I used some spray adhesive to put all of this Tolex onto the case. When you use spray adhesive you get the best bond when both surfaces have dried adhesive on them. So you spray them both down, let them dry, and then stick them together for a really good bond. In this case I did all of the sections one at a time to get pieces to stick together, and then when they overlapped I had to spray more adhesive to make sure that everything was going to bond really tightly. I want to thank Audible for sponsoring this video. While we've been packing up and driving a lot, I've been listening to several audiobooks and one that I really enjoyed was Run Program. This book is about an artificial intelligence that shouldn't be able to contact the outside world, but it does. It's a pretty quick listen and if you like that type of book you can get it for free. Go to audible.com slash make stuff, get a one month trial and a free book. But if you're not into that type of story they have tons and tons of other audiobooks that you can listen to. In fact they have so many and it's growing at such a rate that they asked me not to say a specific number. If you go and check out Audible it tells them that they should continue to support people like me and that's really awesome. Thanks Audible! I worked really hard to try to get nice tight folds over all of the edges of the case and in the corners I took my time to cut angles and get everything folded and pressed down really well. I'm not sure that I did it the best way but I'm actually really happy with the quality of how the corners came out. It took a little bit of experimentation and by the time I got to the other side of the case it looked pretty good. There was a lot of trimming and specific sizing to get it to fit in and I always had to go back and spray more adhesive to get the Tolex to stick to itself and the inside of the case. I was sticky everywhere but eventually I got it done and so I did the top the same way. I used pretty much the same process on the inside. A lot of spray adhesive on the foam and on some velvet to get them to stick together. The turkey thing here is that the velvet is really loose and wants to fold over on itself once it has adhesive on it. When it sticks to itself it makes it really hard to get a nice flat layer. But the good thing is that the bond is not so strong that you can't pull it apart to readjust it if you need to. I sprayed adhesive on the back of this and on the inside of the top and just pushed it into place. I did the same thing for the bottom of the case but it was a little bit trickier because it had to adhere to the bottom and the sides and then I just dropped in that divider. There was a little bit of a gap above the guitar so I added one more pad to the top section right above the bridge. This held it in place and so it wouldn't bounce up and down. I straightened up all of the edges and added gaffer's tape around all the sides to hold it in this position so I could put on the hardware. The last thing to do here is to put on all the hardware. There's nothing complicated here at all it's basically just screwing on some hinges, some corner pieces, some handles, and latches. I'm going to use three hinges on the back of this so I marked in two inches from each end and then found the center point and centered a hinge right there. I went to the hardware store and bought all screws with black painted tops so they should fade right into the hardware. These latches just go on the front they come in two parts and I'll just screw those on and then put on the corner pieces. Each one of the corner pieces here has three screws to hold it in place and there are a lot of different types of hardware that you can get for a case. Typically you can get all of these pieces in black or chrome but there are other options depending on the piece. The particular corners that I got for this one will work but they're not ideal. After getting these I realized that these are more for like an amplifier or something with a heavy duty big rounded corner. I didn't round over the corners that much so something with a smaller radius would actually fit better. This one has three points of connection and there are some of them that only have two and they're made for more of a sharp corner. Down in the description I'm going to put a link to all of the hardware that I use but I'll also put the other type of corner down there in case you want to get those instead. I'm really happy with how this turned out and it's going to work great for this guitar and for what I need it for. Obviously it's not a road case it's not made to stand up to a tour but for going around town and moving in this case it's going to work out just fine. I hope you like this one let me know what you think about it down in the comments and I've got a lot of other types of projects that you may be interested in as well. I'm about to move so I'll be putting some videos about that on my second channel so be sure to check that out if you're interested and don't forget to subscribe. That's it for this one, thanks for watching guys, I'll see you next time.