A little historical housekeeping ...

I actually started building stringed instruments sometime around 1984/1985.

One of my IBM co-workers had just bought his 8 year old daughter a "Chiquita" guitar made by Mark Erlewine in Austin. ( The Chiquita guitar ) ... some might remember the little guitar that Michael Fox was playing in the first scene of "Back To The Future" ... that was a Chiquita. Anyway, my friend brought this little guitar over to the house and after looking at it I opined that I "could build one of those ..." ... understand I had never done ANY woodwork of ANY kind at that point in my life ... I had a new "shop" and basically no tools ... so ... several hundreds of dollars in various tools later I had managed to built this

From Lutherie

Since then I have, over the years ... 25 years or so ... built several more guitars, a banjo, a couple of mandolins ... and a failed effort at a hammered dulcimer (ask me to relate the tale sometime when I have had several drinks!!)

I've also managed to destroy a huge Mexican Bass Guitar (Guitaron') --- I'll need several more drinks to relate THIS story ... and ... learned several things about wood, tools, glue, dyes, paints, varnish and a number of new expletives ...

Below I have included a few pictures of instruments I have built over these past 25 years and a link to a photo album that has many more photo's with some captions on the photos trying to explain what you are seeing ...

The whole album can be see by scrolling thru the pictures at Bade's Lutherie Photo Album

A few pictures ...

My 1st Acoustic build ...

From Lutherie

My best solid body effort to date

From Lutherie

A "better" Acoustic effort around 1989 ...

From Lutherie

An "unfinished" (long story) beauty ...

From Lutherie

My 1st Mandolin

From Lutherie

My current "player" and most recently completed ... 2006

From Lutherie

From Lutherie

From Lutherie

Well ... that more or less brings us up to date ... there were some small "Chiquita" sized guitars I built in the 1988 timeframe that I sold to various people and didn't keep a copy for myself ... I think I still have the wood parts around for one so I might do that at some point just for completeness ...

Next up will be the F4 mandolin build starting in California next month.

From now on out I HOPE to do more "build detail" logging in this web log but felt like I needed to drive a stake in the ground of progress to date ...

Later ....

Welcome to my "Lutherie" web log ....

I am creating this separate web log to keep things a little more organized than just dumping everything into my "personal catch-all" blog.

My intent is to limit entries on this log to all things "lutherie" ... that is ... all things related in some way to my hobby of building stringed instruments. I suspect that occasionally something more "music related" and less "building" related will sneak into this log but for the most part I will try to keep things "build" related ...

In October of this year (2009) Carolyn and I will embark on a "road trip" to San Luis Obispo California. The stated purpose of the trip is that I will be attending a Mandolin Building Lutherie Camp under the direct tutelage of Roger Siminoff. Roger is a well known and respected luthier and has written several books on the subject of building stringed instruments including the de-facto written guide on building a "Bluegrass style" Mandolin (Books by Roger Siminoff). The camp will be an intense 5 day lecture and hands on building experience at Roger's shop in California. There are six registered students and over the course of 5 very intense and action packed days we will each begin construction on an F style mandolin with the objective of leaving with a mandolin ready to finish, install hardware and string up for play.

I will be building an F4 style mandolin (F4 photo) and I believe the rest of the class will be concentrating an F5 style mandolin (F5 photo). I have already done one F5 from a Steward MacDonald kit and asked Roger if I could branch out a bit at the camp with an F4. Roger graciously agreed and so that will be my task.

I intend to detail "class" notes and experiences in THIS web log and our "travel and trip" experiences over in the general log.

We depart for "the wild West" on Friday October 2, 2009 ... stay tuned.

You should be able to "subscribe" to this web log by clicking the link at the top left corner where it says "Subscribe ..."...