How to make a DIY electric broomstick guitar

This is a really minimalistic one string instrument. It is made of a broomstick and a lipstick telecaster guitar pickup. This guitar is played with a bottleneck slide. It is inspired from the early blues roots days.

First of all I sanded the finish off the broomstick.

Using a handsaw and a miter box, I cut the stick to size.

I then shaped the neck. I first used a handsaw to make relief cuts. I then used a chisel to remove as much material as possible. I then used a rasp, a file and sandpaper to finish the shaping.

I drilled a hole for the tuning peg.

I used a piece of string with a dowel to find the center points of the stick.

I added rivet heads to hold the string in place. I secured them in place with super glue.

I then created a notch that would receive the lipstick pickup.

Using my angle grinder I cut a scrap piece of metal that would receive the output jack. On my drill press I drilled holes on it. To avoid the burning of the drill bit I used oil to cool it down.

I then added the tuning peg. Whenever I wanted to add screws I always predrilled pilot holes to avoid splitting of the wood.

I measured the scale of my instrument from nut to bridge. For nut and bridge, I actually used two ball headed screws. I then went to an online fret calculator to find out the fret positions. I marked the fret positions with an owl and then drilled holes to act as fret markers. I spray painted the holes and then sanded over them to keep the color only inside the holes.

The electronics of this guitar are pretty simple. I just soldered the two ends of the pickup on an output jack. I secured the excess wires with a zip tie. I also used heat shrinking tube to cover up a couple of soldered wires.

I assembled the instrument and added the string.

At this point my instrument was ready. All I needed was to add a bottleneck slide on my finger and plug the guitar in my amp! 

After that I am ready for some blues!