Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Gas Can Guitar or call it the...

...CANTAR!



Hey everybody, this was a super fun project to make! It is a 4 string guitar made from an old gas can that I used to use for R/C airplane glow fuel.

This is not my original idea, there have been many other guitars made from an old empty can. In fact, I saw my first canjo on Youtube from this guy Richard Peek. He was playing an oil can banjo that he had made and I thought that it was amazing!

Since seeing his canjo and his playing, I have always wanted to make one for myself but, I don’t know how to play and I really don’t want to take the time to learn. Lazy I guess. So the idea just sat there taking up precious space in one of my two brain cells that are left.

Well, I will tell you that I have a brother-in-law that, around any gift giving occasion, will usually give me a thoughtful gift. Me on the other hand, when it’s my turn to return the thought, pass off the responsibility of getting him a gift to my wife. I don’t know what to get him. I am easy to buy for. Just get me a gift card to Rockler or a tool and I am good. ha ha

Anyway, he has had a birthday recently and we weren’t able to get together to celebrate it yet so I had some time. He plays guitar and I thought that now would be the perfect time to make him one out of my old gas can. If it sounds bad, at least it would be a really unique gift, hopefully something that he has never even seen before.

Well what you see in the pictures is what I came up with and I hope that he likes it. The letters on the head are his initials. The neck is made from a piece of madrone. The frets are finish nails that I blue with gun blue. I bought the geared tuners from a local music store. Of course the “theme” of the guitar is of miscellaneous screws and nails, kind of a hillbilly look. I like the fork that was used to attach the strings to, an idea that I got from rpeek.

Here are some links to a couple of videos that I made for the build of this guitar.  I hope that you will get something from them.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanks for posting. I saw some of Rpeek's vids then I googled gascan bango & found you. good stuff...Bill

Amy Hannah said...

Thank you Bill!

I hope that it was at least somewhat helpful for you.

Brett

Fine/Blue said...

When I enjoyed YouTube before, I ran across a band.
The guitar player and bass player play gas-can-guitar (bass) .
I forgot the detail of their music.
But the cans were red. And they played the blues music, maybe a certain style of shuffle.
I'm trying to find the exact clip. But I've not found it.
If you know the clip or something related, please give me some information.
If you are the player who I look for, it's amazing.