Keilty Guitarworks

Musician and Luthier

08/13/2026

A year and a half in nine photos.

I learned to build guitars with a straight edge, protractor, caliper, pencil, paper, and a mountain of MDF. But every time I went to Brian Nutter to inspect my fret ends or nut slots or sanding scratches, he was messing around with this thing called “Fusion” on his laptop.

So in addition to guitar building, I decided to teach myself two complimentary skills at the same time… which is why there was a three-year gap between the last batch of guitars that I built by hand, and the ones that I am beginning to produce now.

(I mean, I also had another child, moved halfway across the country and renovated a house during that time, so…)

It took a while, but I figured out how to do it this way, and I kept at it through the mistakes, failures and occasional neglect born of circumstance. And now, I can do it again.

It’s all hand work now as we move into final fit and finish process, and it feels kind of like the last few miles of the Nashville marathon, when some saint hands you a honey covered-bagel 2 miles out, and you finally can see the top of the stadium come into view over the beyond the bridge.

08/12/2026

Sand in the place where you live. Maybe a podcast?

08/11/2026

Ready for frets.

Confession, I haven’t made a neck in a while. Lots of repair the last few years, and I had to remember how to fabricate and finish carve this most critical part of the instrument (hence the cosmetic defects in the wood, which present no structural or performance issues, but wouldn’t make it into a custom guitar.)

Hard maple, tilt back, tenon, volute, overlay, spoke wheel- plenty of chances to make mistakes, and remember solutions.

I’m telling you though, if you can concentrate long enough to take all the parallel grain scratches out of rock maple with 220 grit sandpaper, you’ve got the patience for just about anything.

08/06/2026

I’ll be playing some guitar and singing from 12-3 in Salisbury, CT this Saturday, for the Lakeview Journal Street Fair event. So I’m putting away the sanding blocks and warming up a bit.

You can make these simple boxes sing like the human voice, but you have to think like a singer, and not like a guitar player with no need to take a breath. That’s something I’ve been working on for decades, and I’m still working at it.

07/31/2026

40% of luthiery is fixing your own mistakes. Another 40% is sanding.

Here’s my take on the “handmade” versus CNC made guitars- it doesn’t make any difference because both of CNC, or a hand router with templates, can produce dimensionally correct parts in volume. All the actual hand work on an instrument happens after the dimensionally correct parts are created.

I spent about an hour taking scratches out of this neck-to headstock transition area with a sanding form. Same thing for the other side of the neck, then the neck shaft, heel, headstock, then the body, and every other surface on the instrument.

The ancillary hardware and in-house fabricated parts like the nut all need to be dry fit, then the finishing process, which is essentially doing an auto body paint job an object the size of a small end table.… and then everything has to be carefully put together without damaging the finish during the final assembly and set up.

So I don’t think it really matters what particular method anyone uses at the beginning of the process to remove big chunks of wood from other big chunks of wood. That ain’t the mojo.

Maybe someday they’ll make robots that are affordable for a small shop that can do some of these processes. If they do, I’ll be the first to give it a try. But until then, I am the robot.

07/29/2026

That’ll do. Cherry, maple, poplar. All local woods from the “scrap” pile- no plastic on this build except the bobbins and wire insulation.

07/27/2026

This is an unusual post layout, but I’ve got geometry and about 10 hours of CAD on my side to justify it.

Guitar nerds or builders (they’re basically the same just from different ends of the spectrum) can probably see what I was trying to do here- asymmetrical profile, three-on-a-side straight string pull.

Why? Well, the string is basically a suspension bridge over the fret board, anchored at the nut and the bridge, and then wrapped around the tuner post to create tension.

If you look at a lot of classic guitars that are not Fenders, the strings hit the nut and then display outward on an angle to meet the tuner posts at the headstock, because the tuner posts gear actuators need to be a specific distance away from the edge of the headstock to function.

Obviously, this works fine. But from a mechanical perspective, in theory having the string be pulled in a perfectly straight line across its anchor points to the tuner is a superior approach.

It’s a tricky headstock to design, especially when you add the asymmetry and the 7° tilt back to eliminate (ugly) string trees. But Leo Fender and Paul Reid Smith figured it out, so, you know, who wants to back down from that challenge?

TL, DR version: you don’t really need to understand anything that I just wrote or what I did here, but I came up with a solution to a slightly complicated problem, and I just wanted to pat myself on the back. 😆

07/25/2026

Sometimes I work before I go to work, and then do a little work after I get done working.

This build is…different. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen old growth poplar used as a headstock veneer and guitar top before, but so far I don’t hate it.

Why not be a little unique once in a while?

07/23/2026

Oswego was 27 years ago to the day. Catching the “1992” show was amazing nostalgia – I forgot about some of these songs, then Trey would drop the intro riff- and suddenly I realized that 30 years later, I still know every single word and can sing every guitar solo.

I can’t overestimate the amount of influence Phish has had on my musical journey. Over 30 years later and still going strong, with old friends and new.

07/22/2026

Contact. Not too tight, we need some glue in there.

I wasn’t sure if this prototype was going make it to the finish line or not- there’s still a little bit of rework I need to do, but this is the fun part when it starts to actually look like a guitar.

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Address

Litchfield County, CT

Website

http://www.keiltyguitarworks.com/

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