I started making guitars in the late 1980 when there were few concerns about sustainability. It was a hobby I started in college and carried into my work life as time allowed. After living in Alaska for many years I went overseas to teach in Thailand and Malaysia for about 20 years. About 6 years ago I retired early to come back to our beautiful Idaho home and make guitars, but this time with an emphasis on being more sustainable in my use of wood.

Here is the story of how I got started:

“Back in 1980 when I was a college student, I studied classical guitar. I was a beginner, but a hard worker, and I made good progress. I was using a student guitar of fairly poor quality, So my teacher, David Sussman, suggested I find a different instrument. Living near the college was a famous flamenco guitarist named Ron Radford. Radford was a protégé of Carlos Montoya, and studied classical guitar with Andrés Segovia. It turns out that he studied with both masters at the same time at one point, and the guitar he used at that time was a Kohno 10. He still had the instrument, a wonderful guitar, and he sold it to me. I still have it today and love the history of this great guitar!

“Both Ron and David were using larger concert Ramirez guitars. David's guitar was a classical with rosewood sides and a spruce top, while Ron's guitar had Cypress sides and a few other different things characteristic of flamenco guitars. During one of my lessons David and I talked about the differences in classical guitar design and scale. I was fascinated by how the instrument was put together, so he found an article from one of his magazines and brought it in for me to read. It was basically a how-to article about making a classical guitar. I became obsessed with the idea, purchased Irving Sloan’s book on making classical guitars, and set out to make my own instrument. While sourcing as much of my materials locally as I could I also purchased a lot of stuff from The Luthiers Mercantile. I say this because after decades of serving instrument makers around the world, they closed their doors this year.

My first guitar was truly horrible, but chalk that up to learning methods and materials. I was a student living at Principia College in southern Illinois, so I decided to make my second guitar out of domestic woods; Walnut back and sides, Cedar top, and I might have used walnut for the fingerboard, but I can't remember. You may have heard people talk about how the quality of wood was so much better a few decades ago, and I have to say that is largely true. At least, when it comes to common woods. I was able to find my cedar for the sound board at the local lumberyard by rifling through a pile of cedar fence boards, and looking for the ones that had tight quarter sawn grain. In the end the guitar was lopsided. It was close, but a bit crooked. When I took it to share with David Sussman, an extraordinarily polite man, he refrained from outright laughter, and accepted the instrument to play a song. The sound was surprisingly good! We discussed the shape of the instrument and whether or not it contributed to the excellent tone. It was a joy to listen to him play the guitar! Sadly, that instrument was lost in a fire a year later, but that was the beginning of my guitar building adventure!”