This could end up being a bit like the beginning of an AA meeting when a new member joins the group!!

Here’s my story:

I have always loved making things. As a child my friends and I would make go-carts from bits of wood stolen from building sites with nailed-on pram wheels and axles and then head off down the hill at the end of the street with no concerns about the lack of brakes or oncoming pedestrians. Everyone local knew that we couldn’t stop so they’d jump out of the way when they saw us crest the hill and no one ever dreamt of complaining. Can you imagine that today?

At school I was always one of the science kids. Biology mainly, understanding how living things worked always fascinated me, and I could equally happily have followed this path in life as a career. Physics was fun, I loved the equations, and chemistry was ok but didn’t hold quite the same appeal. I started taking (free) classical guitar lessons at the age of 12 or 13 at school and soon afterwards I learned what the letters above the lyrics in song books meant and started to strum along.

Cut to the age of 18, and my final year of school before university, and my biology teacher, having opened a ski shop in Dunfermline, had pretty much lost all interest in teaching his students. It’s funny how that kind of attitude rubs off and pretty soon I too started to question what I really wanted to do with my life. I put my love of making things and guitar playing together and decided that I wanted to learn to make guitars.

My careers advice tutor found out that there were instrument making courses at the London College of Furniture and so I travelled down to Whitechapel for an interview armed only with a great deal of enthusiasm and a modified gunstock for a BSA Airsporter S onto which I grafted various lumps of Rio Rosewood. The guitar making courses were so over subscribed it was pretty much a precondition that you had to already have attended the college evening courses, and to have made several guitars, In order to stand a chance of getting onto the course. This meant crossing to the south side of Commercial Rd to visit the Early Fretted workshop and a course involved in teaching the construction of lutes, viols and the occasional hurdy gurdy. And so it was, that in 1983, I embarked on a two year BTEC that, delightful as it turned out to be, was actually about 450 years too late to really hit the peak of that particular market! Unsurprisingly, I didn’t go on to become a lute maker, my tutors were some of the best and most respected makers in the world, and they were teaching us oikes to boost their income, so it was obvious that this particular market was somewhat over catered for. The course did teach me a huge amount about high quality woodwork, sharpening tools etc and I have never regretted it for one moment.

Instead, I made all kinds of woodwork my main hobby for the next 15 years whilst working in IT, until I eventually set up Bagpress and made selling vacuum presses, and manufacturing veneered panels using them, my main business. I still hadn’t built a guitar but it was burning at the the back of my mind the whole time. Cut to mid 2018 and I was approached by Lowden guitars to design a small vacuum press for bonding braces to soundboards for what turned out to be their guitar making collaboration with Ed Sheeran. I ended up supplying half a dozen of these presses to Lowden and the guitar making thing was getting ever louder in my head. I was running out of excuses not to and so I started to google guitar making courses, watch YouTube videos and do some proper research.

Two things then happened which have steered my life ever since. I discovered guitarmaking.co.uk and I ordered a bending iron from another supplier. Mark’s videos were just an epiphany! His calm presentation and willingness to talk about what could/will go wrong (and how to subsequently fix it) and the ‘every step of the way’ videos instantly removed any doubt with regards to the question, ‘can I do it?’ And turned it to ‘why haven’t I done it yet? The delay in my bending iron arriving made me think about whether I should just start off by vacuum laminating some sides for practice and I mentioned this to Mark in a forum post. Now this is where it gets really spooky because Mark replied something along the lines of ‘why not, the Maccaferri guitars were all made that way’. What Mark didn’t know at that time was that Maccaferri guitars, and their story, had always held a particular fascination for me. What I hadn’t known was that they were made using laminated backs and sides and that I was therefore already in the perfect position to manufacture these components using my Bagpress systems. Now that is serendipity!

It only took me about 12 weeks to finish my first acoustic guitar and I have strung another two since then with a further eight or nine in various stages of completion from 30%-95% finished. I do get side tracked easily and go off on related projects such as my powered dish sander or fret slot table saw, the ultimate design for an external mould or making a composite soundboard. I love working out the processes involved and designing machines and jigs to make them easier or more accurate and repeatable and this tendency for mission creep does slow down my finished instrument production rate but it is what love doing most.

This community of like minded, madly creative, borderline obsessives means the world to me and I feel very lucky to be part of it. I really hope that, in the not too distant future, we can organise some kind of convention (OK, just go down the pub for a few pints) and actually all get to meet, compare notes and admire each other’s work. Now that would be a fun weekend!!

Cheers!

Darren

 @darrenking

Two things then happened which have steered my life ever since. I discovered guitarmaking.co.uk and I ordered a bending iron from another supplier

 I've already posted a photo-thread of my first build here;

https://guitarmaking.co.uk/community/showcase-electric/my-life-changed-in-2007/

And the title "my life changed in 2007" is no exaggeration.

I'd ever been particularly practical.  There, I've admitted it.  My father was never particularly practical.  His father was never (etc - you get the idea).  

My vague memories of school woodwork classes are that I wasn't exactly encouraged to continue with them.  I went off to do Technical Drawing instead (all the way to A level too).  I could draw stuff without having the first idea of what it was for, how it worked, or how to make it.

So, my DiY skills were, errr, slightly lacking.  If someone gave me a piece of wood and a saw, and asked me to saw the piece of wood in half, the outcome was generally tools and pieces of wood flying about the place, followed by various swear words, and - usually - blood.

But I loved wood - the smell, the texture, the patterns, the fact that it's a natural product, etc - and I'd played guitars, made of wood, since my early teens.  I'd had a vague "dream" of making my own guitar, but that was well suppressed by my recognition of the limitation of my practical skills!

It's all my wife's fault.  She pushed me, encouraged me, and then pushed me some more, into looking into guitar-making courses.  Then Mark and Carol's unending patience in reassuring me that, despite my complete numptiness, I really would be able to build a guitar on their course.

So I did it.  And, amazingly, I did it.

The first course taught me that I really could build a guitar.  That was just amazing and passed by in a blur really.  I returned the following year, to learn *how* to build a guitar, making notes, taking photos, and trying to understand why I was doing what I was doing (apart from being because Mark said so!).

Since that second course (2008) I've developed some more practical skills, with the confidence (thanks to Mark) that I really could use tools, and work with wood, and actually make stuff other than a mess of red sawdust.

Over the past few years I've built numerous guitars, and more recently, built a cupboard to fit an alcove in our hallway, built a large stable door to fit a large-door-shaped hole in our kitchen, made a couple of solid wood worktops for our utility rooms, and various other little bits and pieces.

I've said this many times, in many places ... cheers Mark!

I started doing woodwork age about 7 or 8 when I lived in West London. My friend Terry and I used to make go carts from scraps of wood and pram wheels and Dad had a big shed full of tools so I grew up with making things.

When I started playing music in the 1970s I was buying second hand instruments from local shops, but finding they were poor quality and not set up very well. The turning point for me was buying from a well known shop beginning with H (better not give the full name), all of them had problems including the brand new one I had specially made.

I decided then to start building my own stuff (about 1982) and searched for plans. Recycled wood featured largely as it was free and I even managed to find decent stuff in a local wood yard. I remember standing on a 10ft high pile of cedar and saying" I'll take the plank in the middle please". It's straight grained no knots and doesn't have any tap tone but was good to practice on. I still have a fair bit of it but probably won't use it on an instrument again as I've found its worth more to traditional long bow makers for arrows. 

My first ever build was an Irish style bouzouki carved front and back with finger board inlays. The neck is an old table leg and front and back are sourced from the wood yard.

I only started to try to play guitar about 12 years ago just after my 50th birthday - an impulse buy on eBay of  a second hand cheap Encore Strat copy was where I started.   

I had missed out on guitar at school - I was into electronics and while in theory studying for A Levels I built a small synthesizer from articles in Practical Electronics.  After going to Uni I was living in Bristol and helped friends build some PA equipment and amps for guitars and keyboards.   Some local folk bands needed someone to man the mixer and I spent a few years doing that.   I was working as a teacher and got involved with the tech side doing lighting and sound.

You buy a guitar and the you need an amp and of course you have to have a few stompboxes.....  I started looking at modding pedals and for a while made enough money doing mods for other people to allow several upgrades to the poor old Encore Strat.   I tried building guitars from parts with variable success but didn't really know how to set up what I had built.  I bought the Hiscox book but had no idea where to start on building from scratch.  I didn't have a clue where to start - also I didn't have any woodworking skills!  I found an article in Guitar Magazine about some chap called Mark up in Scotland who ran courses - found the website and sent an email and got a reply from someone called Carol.... 

I was approaching my 60th birthday by now and a few things happened - I mentioned the course idea to my mate Dave and he was interested in the idea, Elaine (then partner now wife) asked for ideas for my birthday present and I decided to start working part time - course was booked for September 2017.

I went through the form filling exercise that Carol sends out but didn't really have much of an idea of what I wanted to build but did manage to decide on something SG shaped - turned up for day one and chose a very nice piece of bird-eye maple for my cap and about 6 days later had a very nice guitar to take back to Gloucestershire.  I did keep a day by day diary of my build which was good to look back afterwards

In 2019 it was Dave's turn to be 60 so we went back to Baileys in June - we booked in and this time I had more of an idea about what to build - I thought that a Tele would work - this time I turned up with all of my hardware in a box and an idea to do a sort of Thinline - on the first day I grabbed a nice piece of spalted beech for my top and had another brilliant week.   

The online course was talked about on the course and when I got home I joined, at first for a month but soon made that a whole year...  We have got a large garage but in Summer 2019 it was full of rubbish - I needed a space if I was going to build a guitar - by October I had space - I thought that I would follow the Guitar Making Electric Course as closely as possible - I ordered a kit from Carol but added an Ovangkol cap.  

I followed the course apart from making it semi-hollow and adding a sound hole and just after Christmas Arthur was finished.

The Firebird inspired build, 'The Phoenix'  followed - quite a bit of on a thread on here.

I will soon be starting to build an acoustic, again following the course.

Mark keeps saying that anyone can build guitars and I think he is right but I did need lots of support both on the workshop courses and for my home builds - thanks to Mark and Carol for the workshop courses and for Mark and the Guitar Making gang for the support on here! 

This is great! So amazing to hear other peoples’ stories.

Anyone else want to join the 12 step program?

@darrenking

??????

I have played Guitar since I was 14 and started on a battered acoustic one of my dads friends had given up on.Whilst "playing" the guitar outside the back door in those early days, one of our neighbours came over to ask who was playing the guitar. We became friends and it turned out he was a friend of Hank Marvin no less. He even had one of the original Burns / Baldwin Marvin's that were stolen. A beautiful electric but very heavy. So Electric guitars took off in my mind. Frank even gave me a tele style body, rosewood Neck and some wilkinson pickups and electrics.  My dad was really good with wood and could make most things. so we put together this "tele" it sounded great to me. We then decided I would get hold of some African hardwood from work (used for draining boards in council houses up north) and have a go at making an electric guitar from scratch. Total disaster. never even thought about a truss rod so guess what happened to that guitar 🙂 

Frank taught me the basics of playing a guitar and I started a duo with a school friend. We played the club scene around Liverpool in the late 70's for a few years.

Anyway fast forward.. I've always "fixed up" guitars since then and had many variations. Even owned a Burns Marvin along the route. Sold it after a few years as I never played it properly. Always too scared of scratching it. Never quite got the acoustic bug. They were always harder to play than the electrics.

I now live on the Isle of Man and I married my wife in 2015. She has always encouraged me to keep playing the guitar. Finances do get a little easier when you get older and I had the chance to buy a beautiful Taylor 714ce-S LTD acoustic guitar just after we were married (with her permission of course). I was smitten with the look and the sound of this acoustic. How can they now be so good?

Then I had the chance to retire early and my wife did the same. She wanted to get a degree which would take 3 years of study so she said why don't I find a course to learn guitar building. I thought it would be a good idea and found Marks' website and my wife thought she could study in south Ayrshire whilst I followed my passion, brilliant.

As I've put together some "partscasters" before I decided to have a go at building the acoustic. Spoke to Mark and Carol, even had a video call to pick the wood. I've never met anyone with "the patience of a saint" before but over four visits and some fantastic teaching I produced my very first hand built acoustic guitar. I had been bitten by the guitar building bug.

We fell in love with Ayr and its surroundings so when I said I would like to build an electric now my wife had no hesitation "another few trips to Scotland" So I have been back to build an electric set neck and will when the world allows like to try my hand at the archtop course.

Marks' passion and the way he wants to pass his knowledge on to you makes it very addictive and I would recommend him to anyone. The team at Culroy make it so enjoyable to build a guitar. The live streams are a great way to catch up and also learn new things. Or just remember the bits you have forgotten from the courses. The premium membership is invaluable as you can revisit any stage of a build when you want as many times as you want.

So now because of all this I have fitted out the store room that was laughingly called a garage with tools and benches and have started my own workshop. Built an acoustic and an electric over lockdown and now started 4 more builds.

Still many more miles of the guitar journey left but a big thank you to Mark, Carol, Lewis, Fiona and not forgetting Billy for heading me in the right direction and giving me the confidence to have a go. Viva the revolution (The guitar building one that is)

^^^ That looks beautiful @mikeyrjiom.  Congrats on your build.

Seeing builds like that is really tempting me to "have a go" at building an acoustic.

Mike was finishing the acoustic when I was on my course in 2019 - looked really good then.

A year ago i would have said that an acoustic wasn't possible at home.....

My Bailey kit is waiting - I need to move my workbench a bit to get the workboard in and be able to get round it and then I can begin!

This is not for the squeamish

 Being a student in the early seventies, playing in a band and having no money, I decided to build a kinda Les Paul/Telecaster cross. I knew the body should be a hard wood, so the local joiner sold me a piece of Lignum Vitae. I ruined my Dad’s only chisel  cutting the cavities. I bought a pre-built neck and fingerboard which I glued together. Not knowing about clamps I reckon I must have stacked books on top. Anyway, I managed to make a mistake on the angle of the bridge and had to fill one bridge post hole with plastic wood before drilling again. I found it in the loft recently before we sold the house and moved to Scotland.

But I used it for a couple of years before buying a ’66 sunburst Strat for £180 - a lovely guitar which I promptly re-fretted, stripped and varnished. I only sold it (for £180) when I realised that chiselling new pickup routs for humbuckers wasn’t fair on the guitar.

In the early eighties and doing temp work, I decided that only way I was going to have a small-bodied solid 335 style guitar would be if I built it myself. I got a local joiner to glue some mahogany and iroko together, and then descended into the cellar with a Black and Decker and a metal sanding disc. I came back up two days later with a carved top guitar and a breathing problem.

Again, I bought a half-finished neck and a fingerboard. There was a lot of hot air at the time about ‘fast, slim necks’ so I reshaped the neck so extensively that the skunk stripe started to come loose.

I dug it back out in the nineties with half a mind to convert it into a ‘cyberfunk’ guitar, hence the unfinished hole in the top horn.

After that, I retreated to safer ground and played about with partscasters.

Started playing/stripping guitars apart in 1974 (had a plastic guitar in 1964)

Rapier 44

Cemar (now Ibinez) Strat

1978 saw me becoming a Runner/"Go-for" for the Black Sabbath and AC/DC road crews (they lived at the same farm in Worcestershire). During this time I went with guitar tech to Jay Dee guitars several times to arrange repairs/rebuilds for Angus' SGs. Also a shattered flying V belongjng to Michael Schenker. I later had John customise my Fender Strat. 

Just loved to see bits of wood and metal come together  - inspired a guitar design that I wanted to build.

1990s saw me teaching at Dartington Forestry School Sth Devon.

I would take choice pieces of Ash and Sycamore from tree surgegy operations, to Devon based Master Luthier Chris Eccleshall who found a place for this wood in various guitars that have graced many a stage around the world.

Chris and I designed and produced the 'Electric Lady ' model guitar between us in 2006 and I had many enjoyable hrs with Chris teaching me various aspects of turning Devon wood into bodies and Necks.

2010 I started Electric Lady Guitars Devon 

2013 Sold Electric Lady Guitars Devon 

2019 Started building infrastructure for re-establishing Electric Lady Guitars Devon. Building and repairs 

Seriously hope to learn how to make Acoustic/carved top guitars which is why I'm here - really like Mark's teaching!!!

Sadly Chris Eccleshall died in August 2020, and I fknd myself sorting through piles of wood/patterns and tools that we used together  - mixed feelings, but firmly focussed on days ahead.

My grandaddy came from Ayrshire and to go there and learn more from Mark would be fulfilling.  Let's hope!

Warmness

Eddie

@darrenking

Really enjoyed the video class you did with Mark and hope to try these things sometime. 

Clearing out the recently departed Chris Eccleshall's workshop I have come accross this heavy vacuum pump - I guess it's too vicious for bagpressing?

Genevac 1/4 horse power 

Warmness 

Eddie

1978 saw me becoming a Runner/"Go-for" for the Black Sabbath and AC/DC road crews (they lived at the same farm in Worcestershire)

Jay Dee guitars

Devon based Master Luthier Chris Eccleshall

There's a bunch of famous names from the past!  Sounds like you had an interesting time there @eddie6string.

Interested to see what you do now ...

@tv1010101

Building stock + a few commissions

Models;

Electric Lady Mk1 x 3

Electric Lady 'Stormbringer ' (RB Tribute) x 2

Nu Lady (body mount) x 1

Electric Lady 'Signature ' x 2

Phat Lady Bass x 1

P bass x 1

Rory Strat x 1

Electric Lady 'CR8' "Spitfire" x 1

I'm sure there's more, but so much to organise since emptying Chris' Store and Workshop. 

Can Mark do a study on making more space?

Warmness 

E

@tv1010101

Forgot the 'Psydelic Lady'

@tv1010101

Forgot the 'Psydelic Lady'

@tv1010101

Forgot the 'Psydelic Lady'

@tv1010101

Forgot the 'Psydelic Lady'