In 2012 though 2016 I was in charge of a chemical pilot plant. Over the course of years I designed numerous reactors and chemical processing pieces of equipment. One of the more interesting pieces of equipment I designed, redesigned, then re-redesigned was a continuous reactor to create a homogeneous mixture of natural rubber and reinforcing material (like the rubber for tires).

The reactor was very high pressure (10BAR) and complicated, so, like any safety conscious person, I surrounded it with Lexan in case of a “release” (explosion). The frame of the enclosure as well as the frame of the reactor was made with aluminum strutting material.

After re-redesigning the reactor for efficiency and control, I had a lot of material left over. I couldn’t throw it away (like any good engineer) so I decided I could make a guitar out of it!

The guitar was designed to look like a tetris block, with the offset of the “z” such that it would rest on your leg comfortably. When designing the guitar I didn’t think it would make any sort of pleasing sound so I was originally going to add pickups.

All the design features like the headstock, fretboard radius, number of frets, and scale length were modeled after a Gibson. I used a bandsaw to cut practically everything on the guitar, I even used a bandsaw to cut the fret slots before gluing on the high fretwire (kind of wished I used medium though). The nut, saddle, bridge, fretboard, soundboard, back and headstock are all Lexan.

This guitar does actually play! If you’re interested, check out the video below. I didn’t think it sounded bad, so I never added pickups or any electricals to the guitar.

This was originally made to be my office guitar. I ended up keeping it in my office for the last 15 years where it was absolutely a talking point for my colleagues and clients!