From Humble Beginnings...

In 1965 I was in 5th grade, the Beatles and the 60s music revolution was the focus of my life. I spent hours filling my school notebooks with sketches of electric guitars. I was a Boy Scout in those days and I started my first experiments with wood carving making neckerchief slides out of whatever piece of soft wood I could get my hands on. My real hobby in those days was building and painting plastic models. Over the next few years, my obsession with the form of the electric guitar was still strong and my interests in model building and electric guitars and a new-found fascination with making things from wood began to merge.


A new hobby began to blossom as I started making model electric guitars. My dad had a tool shed where he kept his fishing gear and it had a small work bench and a few shelves, which he allowed me to clear off and use for some tools and little bottles of paint and small nails and thread. I have to say, looking back, I was forced to be creative, having almost no money for supplies. The wood for the guitars were just little pieces of pine I salvaged. The paints were left from my plastic model-building days, as were the small paint brushes. The frets were some thin copper wire I liberated from it's insulation. The tuning knobs were heads cut of small tacks. The pick guards were cut from plastic coffee can lids and the thread was courtesy my mom's sewing box, which I used for strings. Pickups were shaped from little pieces of balsa wood from old, broken gliders. I even bent little hat pins top make the whammy bars. Thus my entry into the world of woodworking which has come in and out of my entire life and i currently a focal point. Happy Throwback thursday everyone!