walnut & ash guitar stand

progress up to 2026-01-11

being in dire need of a guitar stand, I decided to set a quick project for myself with a pretty straight forward brief:

being a chronic buyer of materials for totally real and happening projects, the material was pretty easy having bought some 100x20mm walnut a while back with no real plan for it. I also had some ash dowel that I bought years ago for a project that never really got started. Sorted.

the design was worked out over a fews days of idle doodling during breaks at work, one quick drawing in Affinity to check some angles and a very rough and ready sketch on a sheet of a4 before starting to make sawdust in the garage. The technical drawings were done after I'd made a start... which is definitely the right way around.

the majority of the woodwork was completed in 2 stints so I could do a dry fit to check that nothing bad would happen when I actually popped a guitar on it. Good job I checked because any remotely heavy guitar caused it to tip forward. An easy enough fix, just needed the 2 30mm ash dowels shortening to tilt it back further.

or so I thought. I shortened the base dowels as planned thinking this would solve my problem, completely ignoring the glaring issue that was the real cause of the problem. The real issue was that any reasonably heavy guitar would have enough mass in front of the stand's pivot point to cause it to tip. With so little mass behind this pivot point, it was never likely to work without a pretty major overhaul. Bugger.

i'm still working through a few different options to fix this and make it a working stand. They all boil down to the same thing though: a leg coming out the front of the stand to prevent it tipping forward. Future updates, and hopefully a working stand, coming soon.