Data versus Instinct
On Q factor, useful data, and the place where a builder still has to listen.
What a Timber to Tonewood conference clarified for me about the partnership between measurement and instinct at the bench.
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More French Polish
The finish nitro pushed aside, and why the slow one still makes sense at a one-person bench.
On nitrocellulose lacquer, shellac, and the difference between a finish that fights time and one that lets time help.
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French Polish Is a Way of Paying Attention
It gets called romantic, but what I love about it is its honesty.
On thin finish, patient hands, and why certain surfaces feel less coated than carefully accompanied.
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Most Mistakes Do Not Announce Themselves
The big ones are obvious. The quiet ones are just part of the path: a guitar is a thousand small steps, and the finding and fixing is where the beauty comes from. It is part of the instrument's watermark.
None of this is life and death. It's a thousand small steps, some of them wrong, and the work of noticing and putting them right before they reach the finished guitar.
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Why I Make Guitars
The deepest answer has less to do with wood than with music.
A plain answer to the question underneath the rest of the work: not the romance of tools, but the human need music answers.
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