Hey Everyone! This is my first post here.

I am a high schooler with a CNC machine at his school. I am going to try to build a stratocaster guitar on it. I am somewhat experienced with CNC machines and with woodworking but I have no experience building muscial instruments. At my school I have access to a CNC machine, a planer, a laser cutter, as well as other woodworking tools.

My end goal for this project is to get a decent sounding guitar while keeping the budget under a few hundred dollars.

I am going to build both the body and the neck on the machine, then I plan on buying the fretboard and all the hardware for the guitar.

I just took the first step in my process, buying the wood. I decided to go with basswood as I managed to find some good, quartersawn wood at a nearby lumberyard, and it isn't super expensive. It is now in 3 pieces of wood, about 32 x 10 x 2 inches each. I want to use 2 of these for a blank and one for the neck.

My next step is going to be to try to make a blank for the guitar body. I think I want the blank to be 1.75 x13.75 x 22. I think this should give me enough room to mount this to the machine. I plan to cut the width on a table saw, then possibly run it through a jointer to get a better fit, then cut down the the thickness with the planer. Then I will use some wood glue and glue the two pieces together, bookmatched. I'm hoping to leave the guitar unpainted with some nice finish on it, but if the wood doesn't come out too good I'll paint the body.

I'll be updating this post as I continue to work on the guitar. I would really appreciate any help I could get, as I'm learning many things as I go.