After I retired from the Navy in 1986 Bonnie and I set out on the high seas aboard our floating home Malulani. Now with some spare time on my hands, I decided to learn to play the guitar. After many hours of self teaching, sore fingers and going through a couple of cheap guitars, I felt like I needed a better instrument. I really could not afford to spend much money. As my dad had a woodworking shop set up in his garage at Driftwood Beach , Virginia , I decided it would be fun to try and build one myself. The Martin Guitar Co. offered kits! So I figured "what could be easier? Just slap it together and you have yourself a Martin at half price".
Well it was not that easy! Now I have great admiration for companies such as C.F. Martin. How they can put out such fine instruments at reasonable prices, is beyond me. I did finish that kit guitar and it turned out pretty good. My niece Christine now has it along with the first guitar I built from scratch.
I have built several guitars since the kit guitar and I have started to work professionally now as a lutherie for Pickers Supply in Fredericksburg and am building custom steel string guitars.. I used the wonderful book "Guitar Making: Tradition and Technology" by William R. Cumpiano and Jonathan D. Natelson, as my basic reference but have drawn for many other sources since then. This book is a great way to get started.
Here is one of my custom guitars
- Here are some pictures of my shop
- Some photos of my previous projects.
- Here are some thoughts on the guitar building process and some of my recent changes in how I am building will try and update these pages as I build more tools, jigs and modify my building process.
- Links to some of my favorite guitar building sites
