Lou Shields signature Shitar Deluxe

So those of you who've been paying attention to my work for awhile probably have seen my Shitar.  I made it about 5-6 years ago before I went to school and learned how to build stuff the right way out of scraps from a construction dumpster.  It was essentially a really shitty cigar box guitar, so I called it the "Shitar".  Here's the original:

I had left it over at Lou's house for bonfire parties that we never ended up having last summer.  Early this summer, he went on a road trip of the Northwest US, his travels can be read on the blog at his site, loushieldsart.com.  He came across a guy in Montana who builds custom cigar boxes out of salvaged wood, and when he returned from his trip he figured out how to play mine.  We talked about doing a custom one for him with scraps of wood left over from his ramps, but putting a nice bookmatched top on it.  After finishing the ukulele, I started on it and within a couple days I had most of the body completed since now it isn't guesswork.

This time, instead of random scraps, I used my poplar dowels that I'm so fond of.  The back is a scrap that I had leftover from the original shitar, the sides are all pieces of the Possum ramp, and the rest are shop scraps.  I added a few shims where the sides were uneven, after it's stained, nobody will notice them. 

For the neck, I'm using some lower grade flamed maple I had in stock, and will be using a steel bar to reinforce it, along with a masonite skunk stripe and fretboard.

I'll get started on the neck either sunday or monday and post up a pic when its looking nicer.