Lutherie
In 1959 when I was part of the Stanford in Germany program, I had made my way to Barcelona where I saw flamenco for the first time and was enthralled. So during my senior year 1961-1962 I took some lessons and got boot-strapped. I've been playing off and on ever since, eventually reaching a modest professional level of playing. During the ensuing decades I often wondered what it would be like to build a guitar. The first order of business, of course, was to read a book. It was so thoroughly intimidating that I set it aside for several months. Being a true obsessive, however, I kept thinking about it and made my first timorous step: make a workbench. Then I added lighting. Another long wait ensued as I obsessed some more. Finally, I got on the net and found some lessons on purchasing and sharpening planes and chisels. These were followed by lessons on wood-working. And now it was time to get serious: I ordered the wood blank for the neck and sawed and chiselled and rasped my brains out. The whole project was done piecemeal because I told myself I could bail out at any time. Eventually, however, momentum took over. The pictorial record follows.
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