Barrowbox Guitars

19/03/2026

06/09/2025

Ol' #3 has recently come back to me for a bit of a touch up. Its only 6 and a bit years old and the cheap tuners I used collapsed and it needed some "warranty repairs" carried out. I have been quite happy to oblige because I love this guitar and I know it gets PLAYED .... all the time.... and in the most ludicrous conditions known to man. I built it for a very good friend of mine way back in early 2019, it was only my third attempt at this game and I still didnt really have a clue what I was doing but it kind of looked like a guitar and my friend managed to make it sound like a guitar and we were both relatively happy. What we didnt know at the time was that he was going to take it out to his little backyard home engineering workshop, noodle around on it anytime he needed a break from grinding or welding and would fall deeply in love with it, as have I over the years. The neck bowed really badly because I used cheap softwood from beginners complete ignorance, but it kind of settled into a unique shape over time and action height really doesnt matter when you're playing slide anyway. The patina is very real as you would expect from living on top of the scrap bin in a shed for 6 years but there were a couple of improvements I wanted to do to it and I was really nervous about upsetting the character it has developed over the years. I didnt need to worry, I have fitted and repositioned some (slightly) better quality tuners and tweaked a couple of other things that you would never pick up if they werent pointed out and its back in the shed and sounds better than it ever did !!!!!!!

10/08/2025

09/08/2025

This is all the art I was up against at this years Greazefest art show. It was posted up last night as a continuing online sale. There is some seriously cool stuff in here.....

01/08/2025

All done, ready to go to the show...

01/08/2025

This one has been "finished" for a couple of weeks now but set aside while I have been concentrating on my entry for the Greazefest Art Show. I still need to lower the action height on this one a little bit, but it still sounds great in the meantime...

06/07/2025

Does this count as slide guitar ?????

18/05/2025

I went down to the "Blues on Broardbeach" event yesterday and caught about 8 hours worth of great bands playing across 5 different stages, lots of slide guitar and even a few Cigar Box Guitars being featured on stage so I was feeling a bit inspired this morning and got a few more details worked out on this latest build....

10/05/2025

It's been 2 full years since I have made a guitar, I really lost my mojo for a long time, but finding some authentic American number plates on my road trip through deepest darkest rural Victoria with my brother Michael Barrow a couple of months ago has got me inspired again. This one is coming along nicely and this mock up stage is showing it really does have nice proportions and it feels comfortable in my hands which I have learnt over the last 50 or so attempts is THE most important aspect of whether they are practical playable instruments or not. I have a good feeling about this one.....

29/10/2023

I really haven't done much in the way of guitar building at all this year, really struggling with motivation...but.... I bought this biscuit tin on marketplace yesterday, how could I NOT build a guitar out of this ?!?!?!?