Guitar Building Workshop – Day 1 – John Thomas
We are beginning an adventure this week with Fretboard Journal as field editor John Thomas comes to build his first guitar and to document the crafting of it via the FJ website. There is some serious fun underway!
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“Well,” says Jay Lichty, “want the shop tour now or after dinner?” Though I’ve been traveling all day and am famished, the answer is easy: “Now, please!”
I’ve just pulled up to the Jay Lichty’s and Corrie Wood’s home and shop in Tryon, North Carolina. I’ll be bedding in the guest house by night and making sawdust by day for the next week and a half. Dinner can wait. I want to see that shop and, more importantly, the scraps of wood that I’m supposedly turning into a guitar.
It’s a simply and beautifully laid out shop that Jay, a former custom home builder, designed and constructed. Jay is walking me through the equipment and explaining which switch activates which gizmo, but my attention keeps wandering to the central bench and its contents, which look suspiciously like the parts that I’m going to attempt to form into a playable, stringed instrument.
“Oh,” says Jay as he notices my latest glance toward the bench, “that’s your guitar.” We’ve settled on an all koa parlor guitar in the form of Jay’s flowing, double-cutaway “Bard” model. Ebony bindings, an elegant, razor thin abalone purfling around the top, and, well, a bundle of precious materials that I may really just turn into sawdust. When Jay hears the anxiety in my voice he assures, “You’ll definitely make a beautiful guitar out of this stuff.”
… read the entire article via Fretboard Journal
Guitar Building Workshop – Day 1 – John Thomas image gallery
More photos … Follow along – Days 2-3
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Follow this journey at Fretboard Journal …
Fretboard Journal Field Editor – John Thomas
Read Kalamazoo Gals, John’s critically acclaimed book about the extraordinary women & Gibson’s Banner Guitars of World War II