Guitar and instrument making
After leaving school I (managing director Darren King) attended the London College of Furniture to study Early Fretted Instrument making, a class of instruments which includes the likes of lutes, viols and the occasional hurdy gurdy. Whilst this was an absolutely fascinating course which taught me a huge amount about high quality wood working and sharpening tools, it was probably about 300 years too late for me to really hit the peak of the early fretted instrument market, besides what I really wanted to make was guitars.
Slow forward 35 years and in 2018 I was approached by George Lowden (of Lowden Guitars) with a request to supply vacuum press systems for the Sheeran by Lowden production line, specifically for the bonding of the soundboard bracing.
Over period of months a total of six custom designed, latex membraned presses were supplied for this task and the renewed exposure to guitar making gave me the final kick in the pants that I needed to start building my own guitar(s).
An extended period of online searching over Christmas 2018 led me to the online guitar making forum, guitarmaking.co.uk run by Mark Bailey. This site offer complete video guitar making courses for acoustic, electric and bass guitars and I can honestly say it is one of the most impressive online teaching resources I have ever seen. Not because of its high tech production or ‘operating theatre clean’ demonstration studios, (quite the opposite in fact) but because Mark’s teaching method is slow and methodical, with every step explained before during and after the process being shown. The each, or any, step could be rewound and watched repeatedly meant that it was easy to fully understand every aspect of the build and so my Snail’s Pace guitars were born.
Why the snail? It is simply to remind myself, and anyone else for that matter, that some things take time but they are none the worse for that. It took me 35 years from my initial teenage desire to build a guitar before I eventually strung my first instrument. It was some wait, but I don’t regret it for a minute.
As with almost everything I do, sooner or later I see an opportunity to reinvent some part of the associated tech or tooling and so it was that I came up with the idea for my ‘Fret Slotting Jig’ followed by the ‘Neck Pocket Jig’ and the ‘Flattening Jig’.