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We had the privilege of meting the VP of Martin last fall while we were exhibiting our guitars at the IBMA show in Nashville. He spent some time with us at our booth and extended an invitation for a personal tour of the factory the next time we were in Nazareth. Well, we decided to take him up on his offer last week. We had already been through the public tour a couple of times before so he offered to show us more of the "behind the scenes" processes of the factory, that aren't part of the general public tour.
The first stop was the [incoming] wood warehouse. The warehouse was behind two locked [card reader access only] security doors. Boys and girls, I was weak in the knees to say the least just gazing around the huge building. The shear volume of wood that a factory goes through was nothing short of amazing. There were two large kilns in the corner about the size of a two stall garage. One was loaded with fingerboard and bridge blanks and we got to take a whiff inside one of them. The other was still in [computer controlled] process.
The next stop was the SECOND wood warehouse (behind another security door) where the waiting for process wood is stored. This warehouse had the same height ceilings as the first warehouse and I would guess they were 20'- 30' high. This room had rows and rows, shelf after shelf, pallet after pallet of wood that has already been dried and is normalizing to plant RH levels. All the wood was stored from the floor level to the upper shelf close to the ceiling. ROWS of Sitka, Adirondac & Carpathian, tops, backs (EIRW, Mahogany, MAdRose, Bubinga, Cherry, Walnut, Maple, BR, SE Asian) sides, neck blanks (Mahogany, cherry, laminates of various colors), yada, yada, yada...
In one corner of that warehouse is another area that is behind BARS. This is Chris' private reserve of wood. Can you say BR, mouth watering, perfectly quartered, zootalicious black ink spider webbing like you have NEVER seen. I was in total awe and I have goose bumps now just writing about it. MadRose like we USED to see, Honduran with ink, Zoot Mahoganies & Bubingas, SE Asian with ink, all with perfect and / or ultra zoot figure. I asked if Chris played or builds and I was told that he did neither but that he uses this wood for special projects that he comes up with.
The next stop was the CNC area. Necks were being machined, 12 at a time, in about a minute. A new machine, that I he was eager to show us, was a 30 TON, CNC machine that cut fret slots. The coolness of this machine is that it took a FB blank and cut the fret slots just shy of the edge of the FB so there is no need to bind the edge of the FB. How cool is that? It uses a micro rotary cutter (.023"), takes shallow cuts the length of the slot, the table indexes up for the next path a bit deeper and in about 4 passes it has cut the fret slot to the proper depth. With such a micro bit they can't hog the wood in one pass or the bit will snap. There were about a dozen blanks being cut at the same time.
Next we saw the Laser machine that cuts out tops backs and sides in about 5 seconds. The wood is vaporized by the laser and there is no wood chunks being blown out and the result is a perfectly smooth edge.
The last time we were there all of the body forms were wood. Now they are using (thier own designed) cast aluminum forms for each body. Tops and backs are glued in the same press manner as before but in a Plexiglas [heated] chamber to speed the process.
They use a LOT of jigs and fixtures so a few questions prompted a tour of their Tooling Department. This is where the Tool Makers machine all of Martin's in-house designed and built jigs and fixtures. This is a two floor department operation. Not just some cubby hole in the corner.
I was also taken in the private R&D lab. My eyes were amazed at all of the new projects they were working on. Sorry guys but my lips are sealed out of respect.
The Martin Company has a great deal of respect for the health and well being of their employees. The vast majority of jigs and fixtures were designed with ergonomics in mind for the employee. Even though they have automated many of their processes Martin still does a great deal of hand work.
Huge down draft walls and booths were seen everywhere. The last time we were there the lacquer fumes were very strong in the paint department. This has been addressed and corrected with better ventilation systems. We didn't smell any fumes at all. The vast majority of guitar bodies are now shot with robots. Speaking of robots, the bodies are also buffed by robots with huge 6 FOOT diameter buffing wheels. The area is behind Plexiglas and ventilated so there are no fumes even when buffing.
We saw the 5K Uke. That's right, a $5000.00 Uke that is 100% hand made from start to finish. Cute little all Koa buggers.
The last machine that I saw that I was greatly impressed with is their newly acquired (less than a month old) Plek Pro machine. You load a finished [unstrung guitar] into the machine and it simulates string pull on the neck and then measures each fret height and position relative to the other frets and FB. If one end of one fret is .001" higher than the other end of the fret the machine cuts the fret height perfectly from fret end to fret end. It then dresses each fret relative to the plane of the FB. In less than 5 minutes the neck frets are accurate to within .001". Try that with your fret files ;)
We saw so many other tidbits but these were just some of the high lights of the tour. I am so honored and grateful to have been given this opportunity to experience. Martin is an icon of the industry and a benchmark that we all use as a metric to gage our progress against. What is so gratifying is their willingness to openly share ideas and progress with us. So, my humble thanks to the fine people of Martin Guitar. Long live the king.
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