The ones you'd want to learn from

As we've just heard, this whole project really began when a housemate left and the vision of a workbench materialized where a piano once lived. However, before we get to that, I have to correct a rather large error in my earlier telling. In actual fact it was a pair of dear housemates that had departed Emily Street. My sincere apologies to the omitted — if you're reading, I owe you a hug and perhaps a coffee.

You must understand that this piano-less void in a house full of artsy types could not last long. It would soon be swallowed up by the forces of god knows what. Those of you who have had the "privilege" of living in a house share environment know very well that the occupants  of a household (or rather, their possessions), like certain aquatic creatures, will tend to grow in proportion to the limits of their enclosures. My engineering types will instantly recognize this as a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics. So, politely I asked if anybody would mind my setting up a little workshop to build a guitar.  "Sure, sounds awesome, go for your life," was the answer I got, or something like that. Wonderful people, my housemates.

One thing I've noticed of luthiers and woodworkers is a shared impulse to “nest”. What I mean is that most of them, as a point of departure into the craft will devote significant time and resources to construction of a workbench (a nest). This makes good sense. After all, what better way to learn than by building something so essential and along the way picking up all sorts of fundamental techniques such as how to properly dress and square timber (not trivial!), cut clean joinery and otherwise become acquainted with the feel of one’s tools. Most will devote months and many hundreds of dollars erecting their shrines to the wood gods. Anyhow, I had no time for that sort of dilly-dallying (later, of course, some dalliance), I needed to get going and fast. I wanted to build a guitar not a bench. So rather than accumulate actual skill first, I figured I’d just play it like Newman in The Hustler, fast and loose.

Consequently, I bit the bullet and phoned up a nice man from Gumtree.com.au who was advertising custom workbenches to order. For my American friends, Gumtree is effectively the Craigslist of Australia and coincidentally the site that I used to find my present house. I placed an order for a simple bench made of pine and MDF with my specifications (25"x70"x36") and it arrived a few days later, complete with a nice little shelf on the bottom for storage — a bonus, I was told, for paying cash, and with the condition that I sent along a picture of the guitar when it was finished.

Meanwhile, with the bench bit sorted, I was busy in the evenings combing the internet for tools: chisels, cross-cut and rip saws, bench planes, block planes, files, rasps, straight edges, slightly more esoteric items like violin carving knives, calipers, and hygrometers (fun fact: one should build a guitar in an environment with a stable 45-50% RH), and of course, clamps… loads of clamps.  Anyone interested in the supply list I worked from can find it in Natelson & Cumpiano’s wonderful book, Guitarmaking: Traditionand Technology. This book is a comprehensive one-stop shop for anyone interested in having a crack at making a steel string or a classical.  I read others but this is the book I’ve used almost exclusively for my first build.

Now many steps in the construction of a guitar can be significantly accelerated using modern power tools and specialty jigs. For example, bending the dampened side plates over a hot metal iron — one of the more difficult and intimidating challenges facing the beginner — is made trivial using a commercial bending jig. Though one has to ask with these tools: where’s the fun or the artistry? My decision to work with hand tools in the traditional fashion was made mostly as a point of pride (admittedly, I have caved a bit here). I didn’t want a fast or perfect result so much as I wanted the physical experience; I wanted the hard-earned skill and ultimately, the artistry. But what really sealed the deal happened years earlier in graduate school.

I had driven to Orion, MI from Ann Arbor to visit a luthier called Matthew Chaffin (Chaffin Guitars). My teacher at the time, Brian Roberts, owned a pair of Chaffin guitars and after learning that he was local I couldn't resist calling. I had already tried this with a number of builders but was always shooed away or ignored altogether. When you’re trying to get started, you hear the same story everywhere: luthiers, especially the established pros (i.e. the ones you'd want to learn from) are reluctant to take on apprentices or otherwise engage with the "lost souls." These things demand time and effort that would be better spent building instruments and honing craft, not training future competition.

A finished Chaffin classical. Photo courtesy of Matthew Chaffin (http://www.chaffinguitars.com/)

I was lucky then to find that Mr. Chaffin was not only exceedingly generous and free with his knowledge, but willing to have me up for a tour of his shop. I remember being nervous on the ride up to Orion. I suppose I was scared I’d look foolish. After all it's quite an odd thing to call up a stranger and say, "Hello! I heard you make guitars. Can I come over?"  We got along straight away. Walking into that shop I could hardly contain my excitement. Spanish cedar neck blanks lying about, half-carved; glued up top and back plates leaning against the wall; guitars in various stages of construction hanging neatly from the rafters; and of course a glorious workbench boasting an impressive collage of polished steel and hornbeam and cherry wood. I remember thinking that it would take a lifetime to accumulate all these things. In a far corner was a shelf filled with music and in another, a rack loaded with neat stacks of aging spruce and mahogany and walnut all with waxed ends and spacers to help with seasoning.

Chaffin solera and braced top. Photo courtesy of Matthew Chaffin (http://www.chaffinguitars.com/)

In the hours that followed, he took me through his process. I fired off endless questions about this and that. I was particularly impressed with the custom rosewood and brass tools that he himself had fabricated for performing some of the more routine tasks. It was here that I took my first shavings with a hand plane. At a local Mexican joint a bit later on we talked a bit about my situation.  I think he was happy to have the focus shift away from himself for a while. It was strange to feel his excitement and curiosity about the things I was doing in my research.  We must have resembled a pair of neighbors gazing admiringly at one another’s lawns.

Detail of a Chaffin rosette. Photo courtesy of Matthew Chaffin (http://www.chaffinguitars.com/)

After dinner we returned to the shop and I was treated to a private concert. The whole day had been a revelation, I had learned more in the space of a few hours than I had in a year, and now, with the sound of this guitar ringing so sweetly in the space of the small shop, I was filled with an aching — I wanted this for myself. I wanted to hold an instrument and play it knowing that I was responsible for shaping every detail of the sound that it produced.

A while back, thumbing through photos on an old phone I came across a recording from that night of Matthew playing a beautiful little Tarrega study.  He's been kind enough to let me share it here.