New stuff at last!

As promised, we’ve now got broadband! So, for your viewing pleasure, I’ve put three new videos on YouTube. Please remember whilst watching these efforts that I can make instruments better than I play!!!! As I always say, “I play for my pleasure and no one else’s!”

Firstly, we have the two African Blackwood and sinker redwood instruments for Matt Bellamy and Morgan Nicholls of Muse. They’re about to embark on a major world tour so, good luck guys hope it all goes well.



Next, we have Jill’s quilted maple twin-point mandolin.



The third is, “The design and construction of a parlour guitar part I”
Regular readers may remember that awhile ago I actually bought an old parlour guitar! Well, I’m using that as the basis of a new guitar and I thought it might make a nice change to do a video diary of its creation.



And lastly, with a lot of help from my son Luke, I’ve revamped the website. I’m very pleased with the results: I hope that you like it too. As they say in the best American diners, “Enjoy.”
Click here for the new site .

PS. Many thanks to those of you who leave nice comments about my work; they’re greatly appreciated, cheers!

African Blackwood Guitar and Ukulele

We made it safely to our new home, a converted Methodist Chapel in the Norfolk countryside. It took 2 trucks, one for the house and the other for the workshop! One of the most stressful parts of the move has been trying to get, without much luck, a telephone line and broadband so I shall only be on-line intermittently until mid-August, thanks to the local internet cafe.
As promised a bit about the two Blackwood instruments: they were completed just before we moved. The soundboards were French polished and the rest of the instruments were finished with Tru-Oil. The combination of the two types of finish worked really well. The oil allowed the natural beauty of the African Blackwood to show through and it also gives a nice feel to the neck, lacquer can feel sticky.

Morgan had very definite ideas on how he wanted the instruments to look and the finish gives them the “aged” look that he was after.
Morgan set me quite a few challenges throughout this build, the final being the bridges. He wanted a curved shape bridge, a tie-block that blended in and was doubled drilled for tying the strings; this involved a fair bit of discussion over their design, but I think that we were both pleased with the results. Probably the best bridges that I’ve made!

Below are a variety of photos of the instruments:



African Blackwood backs, sides, fingerboards head overlays and bridges
Sinker redwood soundboards
Pink ivory (sacred wood of the Zulu) binding and rosettes
20,000 year old fossilised walrus tusk nuts and saddles.
Doesn’t get much more exotic!







How do they sound? Well, I’ve made another one of my videos which I’ll upload once I’m properly back on line; however it does not do them justice. The Matt Bellamy’s classical guitar sounds very promising; already the trebles are sounding out loud and sweet and there are also some nice rich bass tones. It will need to be played in for a few months to reach its full potential, but I think that it’s going to be rather special. Morgan’s baritone ukulele was a revelation! I was pleased that it had a good tone and volume when I played it and that it didn’t sound plinkity plonkity like some ukes do. But when he came over and played it! The volume was outstanding for such a small instrument.

Hopefully Morgan and Matt will be pleased with these instruments: I certainly am. It was a good experience working with Morgan, he pushed the envelope and I feel that I’m a better luthier for it.

So much to do!!

The Red Mandolin nears completion; I’m just waiting for the French polish to harden and then it can be shipped to its new owner Alan.


Alan has been waiting very patiently for this mandolin and I must admit that I’m very grateful that all of my client’s are so patient. Those of you who regularly look at the blog might realise that I‘m bit behind at the moment, I’m still trying to catch up after my sinus operation at Christmas! Also I mentioned this phrase, “caring more and more about less and less,” in a recent post and I think my increasingly fastidious approach is slowing me up a bit too!

Jill’s Mandolin II

Have a look at the sequence of photos below for the construction of Jill’s neck...... I could just have band-sawn a maple neck out of a big lump of wood but there is going to be a decorative stripe of walnut and red veneer (which will match the purflings and binding) and structurally a laminated neck with a scarf head joint is far stronger.

Planning the best way to use the wood.
Heel glued to neckIt's then cut down the middle ready for the laminations
And finally the head overlay which you saw in the last post is glued on and the head shaped.

I’ve also been working on the rosette and you can see the red theme being picked up again.


Each piece of abalone is individually cut and I was pleased to get the whole rosette from one piece, so the colours match throughout.
How pretty is that!

Matt and Morgan's Blackwood instruments

The two African Blackwood instruments are coming along nicely and you can see that Matt’s guitar has caught up with Morgan’s uke.

Two heads are better than one?

The Red Mandolin is now being French polished and I’ll post some more pictures when it’s shiny! The other two instruments, the nylon string guitar and baritone ukulele, that I have working on are now well under way. They are going to be two of the most exotic instruments that I have ever made: sinker Redwood tops, Pink ivory rosettes and bindings and African Blackwood back and sides!

An interesting aspect of this project is that the clients have supplied the wood. Last year I had a call from Morgan Nicholls, he had just come back from a world tour with the band Muse. Whilst on tour he and the guitarist Matt Bellamy had collected some really beautiful wood, which to cut a long story short I’m turning into instruments for them. Morgan is having the uke’ and Matt the nylon string guitar. Matt was recently described by Alan Yentob in BBC’s “Story of the Guitar” as “the first guitar god of the 21st century.”

Since getting the commission I’ve been listening to Muse in the workshop and must say they remind me of my youth, when rock bands were actually populated by guys who could really play!!

Morgan has been overseeing the project and it’s a pleasure chatting with him: he’s a knowledgeable guy, having made a guitar himself and fortunately, we seem to be on the same wavelength design wise.

You’ll remember the design sketches for the head shape, well shape C was chosen so I though that I’d show you how these drawings were realised.

Firstly the neck blanks with scarf joints for the heads are prepared. The necks have been cut down the middle and laminated with some African Blackwood, as both decoration and for additional stability.

A slot is then routed for carbon-fibre reinforcements. Once the carbon-fibre has set in place and has been cleaned-up, the head overlays are glued on.

The head overlays are made up from 5 pieces of wood: two pieces of Blackwood with a pink ivory strip down the middle and backed with white and black sycamore veneers to give some fine lines around the edge of the head. As the overlays have a definite centre line they have to be glued on in exactly the right place; small wooden pegs aid this.

With head overlays in place, next is some very careful marking out. The marking out is done on masking tape so that I can see where I’m going!

The sides of the head are planed down to the final size and then the holes for the tuners are drilled. As these are classical tuners, they have three rollers fixed to a plate and the roller extends almost to the centre of the head, therefore the holes have to spot-on else they will bind whilst tuning.

Once the holes for the rollers have been drilled, the next step is to cut the slots through the head. Large holes are drilled and the bulk of waste removed with a good old-fashioned coping saw.

I then use a router and a special jig that I’ve made to clean-up the slots.

With the slots cut-out, the head shape is roughed out on the band saw and then follows some careful shaping by hand to get the final out-line.

The last stage is to file the ramps where the strings run from the tuners to the nut.

And there we have it two finished headstocks!