Guitars

Students build guitars

By Stephen Faleski

Staff Writer

There isn’t much room for error when crafting a handmade guitar.

“You literally have one go to get it all perfect,” said Jackson Lamm, a senior at Smithfield High School.

Lamm is one of four independent study students in Adam Shipman’s engineering course. Throughout the school year, they’ve been working two to three steps ahead of the rest of their classmates to design, build and wire electric guitars.

Shipman created a prototype over the summer of 2021, but each student’s guitar will be unique. Jackson’s has a number of curved angles. Carter Hendrick, another senior, made his more rounded.

Brent Loftin plans to stain his guitar, allowing the wood grain to show through. Carter plains to paint his gloss black with silver trim.

“The great thing with this project is you have a lot of choice, what to do as far as design … every single guitar here has a completely different headstock,” Jackson said.

Changing the shape of a guitar’s headstock is one of the ways major guitar manufacturers brand their products, he explained. The device, located at the top of the neck, holds each guitar’s tuning pegs.

Mistakes made along the way can limit design options. When Carter was drilling holes for his guitar’s wiring, the drill bit went too far and chipped part of the wood body. He fixed it with wood filler, and it won’t be noticeable once he paints it, but had he planned to stain it instead, the filler’s lighter color and lack of wood grain would be noticeable.

Jackson also had a near-miss when cutting the 1/8-inch birch top that will cover the custom-designed triangular housing for his guitar’s electronics — cutting perilously close to the edge of the guitar’s body.

Painting comes with its own share of challenges. If the wood hasn’t been perfectly sanded, the paint will find and draw attention to any crevice, Jackson said.

The four independent study seniors designed their guitars at the start of the school year using a computer program called Inkscape, then used a vinyl cutter to trace their designs onto a thick slab of wood.

The project will count as the four independent study seniors’ “capstone,” a year-long project third- and fourth-year engineering students at SHS must complete. The students will also be wiring the guitars themselves using potentiometers to demonstrate their knowledge of electronics.

Potentiometers are dials that function similar to dimmable light switches. Turning the dial varies the voltage across the circuit to adjust functions such as volume.

Students have the option of keeping their guitars if they pay half of the $200 cost for materials.

The end goal, according to Shipman, is to give every student who completes Smithfield High’s firstthrough fourth-year engineering courses the competencies needed to achieve Manufacturing Technician 1 certification.

“We’ve had a good record in the past; we get somewhere in the 70- 80% passing rate,” Shipman said.

Obtaining the certification entails passing three separate onehour tests — one on mathematics, one on mechanics, and one on business acumen. Students who pass the first two tests become certified Manufacturing Specialists. Students who pass all three obtain the coveted MT1 certification.

“All things being equal, usually what happens when someone has an MT1 and someone doesn’t, the person with the MT1 is the person who’s going to get the job,” Shipman said.

The school also partners with the Federation of Manufacturing Educators, which offers students the opportunity to obtain a two-year degree while apprenticing with a participating company.

“Having MT1 definitely gets your foot in the door,” Shipman said.

Jackson plans to pursue a career in engineering, but since working in Shipman’s class, has cultivated a new interest as well.

He wants to learn to play guitar.