Step Two: Preparing the Box

As I mentioned earlier, the cigar box - or whatever you are using - has the job of amplifying your guitar, and so the bigger it is the louder your guitar should be. How this works is all very scientific and beyond my meager brain, but in terms of the CBG we're going to have to fit the neck so it passes through the box and that involves a bit of work.

Now, I know I'm not the brightest, but even I have worked out that this is very likely to mean that we'll be cutting a couple of holes for the neck to pass through. As with preparing the neck then, it makes sense to work out where these will be placed and how big they are going to need to be.

Of course, it isn't quite as simple as having the neck go through at any point, there are the strings to consider which will be running on the outside of the box (so you can play them,) so we will need to cut the holes at the very top of the box so that the neck is level with the lid. As this is impossible, it will also mean that we'll need to remove a piece of the neck that is as thick as the box lid.

If that isn't totally clear, lets put it this way.
Neck passes through box.
There are two holes, one in and one out.
The holes in the box will need to be the height of our neck, so about an inch.
While the neck is in the box, it will have to be thinner to accommodate the depth of the lid.

So if the neck is 1" deep, and
the lid is 1/4" deep,
the piece of the neck that will be inside the box needs to be 3/4".

As for the box then, we need to mark the in and out holes so that we can cut them later. This is easily done - measure the box and find the middle, then mark our neck width on there. Do the same both ends, and then to check, open the box lid and lay the neck across the top to check that your marks line up. You could of course do this to start with, and make sure that the gaps either side of the neck are equal. Whatever boats your float.

Once you have marked these, colour in the little rectangle on either side, it will make things simpler when you come to cut them.