While my former boss, Mr. Stock, was fond of suggesting that the surest way to master a set of skills was to teach those skills, that advice presupposed at least a journeyman's - if not near-mastery - of the topic at hand.

... it seems less likely that something like fretwork and set up would be the type of thing one could teach well without being able to do a passable job of. Though I would have a hard time putting into words why it seems like that to me.

My day job is as teacher and researcher, and in my field I've also been a practitioner as well. Instrument building is an amateur activity for me - I've achieved instruments which play well and sound nice, though all with flaws.

I think I could teach the theory behind set up and fretwork pretty well - my students would have a clear idea about what they were trying to achieve, and the techniques which could get them there. This is because I've researched the topic thoroughly, and practised enough of it to understand how to start putting the theory into practice.

Where my teaching would fall short is in teaching the final progression from adequate to excellent. My own practice in setup and fretwork tells me that this is where experience (doing lots of the work) and achievement (actually producing excellent work) is critical. Without that, I can't analyse why (say) a refret job falls short of excellent, and thus I can't teach the last step. there is something intangible about the expertise which comes from experience which defies analysis - putting it in musical terms, we all recognise the difference between a musician who can play all the notes and one who turns them into great music, but I don't know anyone who can explain the difference clearly.

On the other hand, there will be really excellent luthiers who just know how to get it right, but have never learned how to analyse and explain what they do. They can't teach, other than by saying "That's bad" and "That's better", and leaving the student to self-learn (somehow) from the differences.

I might as well add my 2 cents. I've studied under some really good Luthiers. One thing I will say is just because one knows how to do something as a professional doesn't necessarily male them a good teacher. For instance I happened to be fortunate enough to take a fretting class from Dave and Hesh, they were both great teachers and both are really good at what they do. But it's not always the case. This brings to mind going to school, only about 20% of my teachers were great, the rest were just punching a clock and had no business teaching anything.

On another note I think we all need to get together and encourage Ann Arbor Guitars to do more classes. To me it was money well spent and worth every penny and I would pay even more to take more classes with them.

Those who were here on the OLF back in 2006ish will recall this weird Hesh guy who would jump into nearly every thread and answer the OP's questions. I had only been building for about a year. It's my nature to live something 24/7 when I am into it. I get obsessed and can't stop.... This said as I am building my second tube amp in two weeks....

Anyway it's also how I learn best to totally engage in the subject manner and I saw helping other OLF members here as an opportunity to learn the material better myself because every time I did this it was a quiz or test of sorts and I like being tested. I also knew, and this is important that although I was a newb to the trade and the forum there were much more experienced people here, Mario, Rick and others who would set me and others straight if I got it wrong.

So I was out there in a way but with training wheels on and under the scrutiny of the people who really knew the material.

I agree that the fastest way to learn something really well is to teach it and that's kind of what I did here back then but again and importantly with others to keep me honest and the information being conveyed valid. I would not and did not take what I learned here and on my own with no scrutiny attempt to teach it. I'm not being critical of anyone I'm simply stating that I didn't feel comfortable teaching anything unless there was someone else to back stop for me when, not if... I got it wrong.

We, Ann Arbor Guitars as you know taught a couple dozen or so OLFers and about the same number of non-OLF folks. We taught them what we do every day and have done hundreds and thousands of times.

Although using metrics, how many of this or that we do or did may bother some it's impossible to not mention it for me and I believe it's important to be able to separate the people who have an academic knowledge of the material and the folks who actually walk the walk and do these things hundreds or times annually if not every day. If I were a student it would matter to me the experience level of anyone teaching me anything.

Dave Collins my best friend and business partner used to teach Lutherie professionally for years at the Galloup School of Lutherie. He is from the same professional linage as Dan E and Bryan Galloup and now I am too. We all started in Ann Arbor around the Herb David Guitar Studio.

So when we offered classes and hung out that shingle Dave had already taught hundreds and also built over 200 guitars including many of the prototypes for what became McPherson guitars.

We didn't teach people to be Luthiers but instead offered what I identified as the greatest need for the builders I knew, learning to do great fretwork, nuts, saddles and killer set-ups. Most here see guitar building as a woodworking project. We see it and saw it as building tools for musicians.... which brings playability into the top of the task list.

We surveyed our students after every class and everyone always gave us five stars and many of our students talk about what they learned from us to this day here. They had an instructor with 20 years of experience who had always been a professional Luthier including doing repairs at Elderly Instruments in Lansing as well. And they had me, Dave's loyal sidekick to weigh-in and piss people off once in a while...

What do I think of someone barely qualified to string a guitar offering classes in repair and set-up? How about them Tigers.... Seriously I try not to think of such things.

In our neck of the woods people hang out shingles every year seemingly and then see themselves as competing with us. We rarely even notice them and by the time we do their girlfriends and wives/husbands, etc. are tired of paying all the bills themselves and the repair businesses are shuttered.

A note on why we taught. I thought that Dave was and is a incredible teacher, look what he did with me. And I knew he used to teach so I made a list of goals for him that I thought he would dig when we started the business. This list included him teaching again, a couple of jigs he invented being brought to market and one last, important thing, being profitable. I was trained to run corporations at the senior level so making a Lutherie business profitable sounded very fun to me.

Anyway everything has been checked off the Dave list we have now done all the things we wanted initially to do.

Teaching for us was harder than the daily work likely because we gave a **** if the specific student seemed to get-it or not. The days were very long too, 12 hours sometimes and then I got stuck in the elevator in a blizzard and the fire department had to get me out. That same elevator has been down all last week...

In the end for now of our teaching we decided that we are more profitable doing billable hours and it's way easier on both of us too. So we stopped teaching at least for now.

So with all this said naturally I am going to say that anyone who teaches anything should have a great deal of hands-on experience actually performing those tasks over and over and over again. They should have references and accomplishments. Being published would be helpful and more specifically anything that they do that willingly and knowingly puts their teaching ability out here for peer review I think is a good thing.

What I would be very concerned about and avoid is someone who does not have experience and even the metrics to convey what level of experience.

But then again what are ya going to do? They will come and they will go and only the people who represent and offer real value will prevail.

My bet is this will self correct in a couple dozen months.