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
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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 ...
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My best solid body effort to date
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A "better" Acoustic effort around 1989 ...
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An "unfinished" (long story) beauty ...
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My 1st Mandolin
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My current "player" and most recently completed ... 2006
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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 ....
Very cool, dad! Your development of wood working expertise has grown so much and the pieces you have made are truly treasures.
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