Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm 62, have 3 sons & 1 daughter all grown. I'm currently in the middle of my second divorce. I live in the Coast Range of Oregon on 97 acres of forest. Some of the wood that goes onto my instruments comes off of the property.
Over the years there's been alot of different jobs - worked in the shipyards & the woods, sheetmetal, construction, farming, beekeeping & landscape gardening. Now in addition to building and repair of instruments I own a music store.http://www.newbergmusiccenter.com
Made my first instrument when I was 10 & traded it to another kid for a BB gun then made another one. I've been building & repairing instruments on and off since then. During the 60's & 70's I made and sold dulcimers & banjos at craft fairs between other jobs. Now I make guitars, bouzoukis both electric and acoustic, mandolins and fiddles. It looks like I'll need to start making the dulcimers again since I've been getting asked about them recently.

Still tryin to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

now that grumpy's blessed this thread (even a picture!!) how can i help but jump in.

i'm phil campbell-enns (started as phil enns, then married a campbell girl and liked the family so much that i took on the name). i'm 39. as i type this my three year old daughter is 'tatooing' my arm with stickers, and my five year old daughter has just turned off the tele and joined us. my wife has already left the house to teach kindergarten for the morning.

i've been building guitars for 5 years (just about done #8). i started because i was looking for a hobby/diversion that would make time stand still. when i'm lucky, that happens about 3 or 4 times a week for a couple of hours after the little ones are in bed. building guitars combines two loves that i discovered rather late compared to many of you. i started playing guitar when i was 20 and started taking woodworking more seriously when i was 27. the only downside to building is that it competes for my hobby time with playing. i'm not 40 yet, but well aware that life will feel too short to do it all.

oh, and my real job / vocation / passion / calling is as a youth pastor in a relatively small church (just big enough to have two full time pastors on staff).

beyond the generosity that's shared daily here on the forum, i'm generally blown away by the kinship of the whole "guitar world." builders and players alike seem to be great people that make instant connections.

phil

Ok, time for me to jump in...

Joe Breault, 32 and live in Merrimack, NH with Dawn my wonderful wife of 9 months. We share our house with a rambunctious labradoodle puppy named Sophie.

I'm a PC technician at st. Anselm college, which is a small Catholic college in Manchester, NH. The job can be extremely stressful and trying on the patience. But, it can be extremely fun at times too.

I've been playing guitar since I was 16 or so. I started on the violin when I was 10 (I wish I kept that up), then picked up the electric bass in junior high. I always wanted to build or repair instruments, so after I got divorced from my first (practice) wife, I decided to take the plunge as a kind of therapy.

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Joe Breault
Merrimack, NH
Perpetual novice

Ok, I'll jump in here too. I live in the middle of Amish world, and there are so many woodworkers and craftsman in our area, it's inspiring. I have two great daughters, both 20 (not twins, mine and hers ) My wife Cheryl and I have been married for 11 years and she is the most loving and encouraging person I have ever known. I'm 45 and have been unemployed for a year now. I went to work at an auto collision shop when I was 15 years old on spring break 1978. Worked there after school and weekends until graduating high school and went to work there full time. I worked there until a year ago. Owned the shop for five years and managed it for eight. Insurance companies have ruined the that industry. So I closed the shop and sold the property one year ago. Took the summer off to "think things over" With the encouragement of my wife, I decided to start a guitar finishing shop and let fate run it's course. I finished guitars every now and then at my body shop but never considered it as an occupation. I wanted to build a guitar during my time off from work but after hanging out here I realized there is a need for quility finishers so why not me?
I'm far from making a living at this but with a little luck and God's grace this just might work out. Here I am in my little heaven.

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jw ( o)===:::

This is the best thread ever! I have completely enjoyed reading every one of these posts! I feel like I know everyone a bit better now!

Is it me or is Mario getting a little soft ( I think this thread has made his heart grow 10 times its size)

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Support the OLF! Bookmark our STEWMAC link Today!
Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Ok… it’s my turn!

My name is Marc Lupien, I am 40 years old and live in the very snowy city of Montreal. I am an electrical engineer and I earn a living as a registered patent agent. Since I am self employed, I can divide my time between working the day job, building guitars and working on other lutherie related projects. I presently spend about 8 days a month (and a couple of nights…) building guitars.

I recently married my love Josée. We decided to have a “surprise wedding” during my 40th birthday party. It was real fun to surprise everybody!

I’ve been playing guitar and bass on and off since I am in high school but the practice time has been scarce since I began building guitars in 1995. I learned to build acoustic guitars at a local guitar building class. I mostly build semi-acoustic and chambered electrics in my own shop since 2002. I share the shop with other Montreal-based luthiers that I met at the guitar building class.

I will be at the Montreal Guitar Show this year and those attending the show and interested in a shop visit are encouraged to contact me via PM. A more elaborate “get together” could be organized at the shop should there be enough interest.

Here’s what I look like… sometimes!

I'm 35 in North Carolina. I started out as a chemical engineer and then switched to software development, chasing the money during the dot com boom. I am currently self employed writing software. I am not the workaholic type; I take on just enough work to pay the mortgage and a little extra for the future. Fortunately I can charge enough to leave plenty of time to pursue my interests. So far it is working out great and I am loving every minute in the shop.

Well let's see...
I first graced this planet in the finest of years for Chevrolets (1957) and am one of the few people of my generation who can claim native status of the state of California. Actually my whole family (3 sisters & 1 bro) were all born in the Stanford Hospital.
After some tumultuous times my stepfather entered the picture and we shipped off to Delaware, where I spent many of my "formative years" including high school. It was there I first began to learn guitar playing, repairing and building. Any of you remember the Drum Shop in Wilmington?
As soon as I had my own wheels I was outta there and back to the west coast. Needing to pay rent, etc I started working as a carpenter, then cabinet maker, then furniture maker and rode the first boom in the SF bay area for all it was worth. Fortunately I made some very good contacts and still have clients from those days. I took a break in the mid 80's and went to the Wendell Castle Workshop in Rochester NY for a year to learn the finer points of solid wood joinery.
When I met my wife Cheryl (who is also a CA native) we both owned houses in Oakland CA. When we decided to make a life together we looked at several places in CA where we could envision living (SF area, Central Coast, Santa Barbara) we soon realized that even after selling 2 houses we were still about a half million short for the kind of neighborhoods we would consider. So, we widened our search a bit, chose Portland OR and have never looked back. Whenever we visit CA we realize how much time we spent sitting in traffic... Neither of us have children, but we make up for it with 3 cats (Cheryl volunteers at the Humane Society), and our very cute, but not too bright Pug Daisy. I'm still trying to figure out how to claim my 1974 Porsche as a dependent on my taxes....
So here we are with our house paid for, walking distance from all the essentials (we drive maybe 5000 miles a year total) and I've got my shop in the back yard. Sometimes I've gotta pinch myself.
I go back and forth between guitar making and high end custom furniture projects. With a 2 year backlog of furniture commisions, I've got the freedom to explore alternate designs in lutherie- such as my "Freestyle" model. Cheryl is the creative force behind our BeauGuard line of pickguard and trim material.
Other interests are of course music of just about any color (except the hard core rap with violent lyrics, and squalling opera), art, literature (current read is Love in the time of Cholera) and Cheryl and I both love to travel. Many of Cheryl's photographs are from her travels to some very interesting (Syria, Vietnam, Israel) places. We've taken a particular interest in France, where my father was born, so we're studying French language at an evening school nearby. My favorite outdoor activities are sculling (rowing in the long skinny boats) and sailing, which I do miss the SF bay for.
My own guitar playing tends to the early american styles of Blues, Ragtime and a little Gospel. I've been very fortunate to befriend and learn from some of my favorite players; Woody Mann, Mary Flower (who is a neighbor) Mike Dowling, Del Rey, and Steve James to name a few. Woody and Mary will both be performing at the Miami festival this year. I have recently started Piano lessons on account of we inherited the 1919 Steinway Baby Grand that my grandfather bought new for my grandmother, who was a minor opera star at the time. Man, I wish I had started learning music on the piano instead of the guitar. It's so much more logical!
I look forward to meeting those of you who are attending or showing at the Miami festival this year. Stop by and say hi and check out my guitars and the newest BeauGuard designs.
Ciao!
-C

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

My name is Charlie,
I live in beautiful British Columbia with my beautiful wife, our dog and 2 cats... we currently live beachfront, on the Pacific Ocean, but are going to be relocating to a new home inland slightly... where we will be better able to live our dream of having a couple businesses, and living a rural renaissance lifestyle...
hers garden and permaculture design/market garden
his guitar building and repair, and all around garden slave
Its been a long time coming, but luck has favoured us of late... and we are both excited to be "living the dream" as they say!

Our new home is on a sunny flat 2 acre parcel, lots of room for camping, and is only a 10 minute walk to the Pacific Ocean, a 15 minute drive to the Westcoast Trail park/beach system,,, 10 minutes from Sooke

I was thinking of a Westcoast OLF gathering in the future mabye?
Im putting it out there,,,, we might be able to combine it with an Islands Luthier Guild meeting also....?? well see... as thats another topic..
Glad to meet you all!
Cheers
Charlie

HI, I'm a retired mechanical engineer, 64 years old. Worked for IBM building disk drives in San Jose CA, Singapore, and Japan for 33 years, then got a chance to work for a medical equipment startup. Thought that sounded like an interesting thing to do, so retired from IBM and went with the startup. Spent 4 years there, but it never went anywhere, so when I was laid off, I decided to retire. My wife of 25 years and I are currently living in Sebastopol, CA, (about 15 miles from Healdsburg) fixing up a house we bought there a few years back. We rented it for 3 years, then when my wife retired from teaching, we moved there to remodel the house. We were orginally going to live there permanently, but my oldest son is just moving down to the South Bay area from Portland, so now all three of our kids will be living there. We still have our house in Saratoga (south bay), so I think the lure of grandkids is going to mean we end up selling the Sebastopol house, and going back to Saratoga in a year or so when the remodel is done (and the housing market has recovered some, I hope).

I've been a woodworker as a hobby for a long time, used it mainly for carpentery in several house remodels, but I was getting more and more interested in doing finer woodworking as time went on. I used it in working on rebuilding several old mahogany speedboats in the 90's. But lutherie has interested me for a long time, combining fine woodworking, finishing, and music. So about two years ago I bought an unserviced kit from LMI, and after getting over the "what did I just spend all that money for??) feeling as I looked at that pile of flat boards and blocks of wood, had a great time building my first. I've done three now, and am currently working on a size 0 with removable neck for use as a travel guitar. I love the building process, and I'm also taking a beginning class in guitar playing from the local junior college, so I can play what I build.

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Gene

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason- Mark Twain

Hi Folks. It's great to read all of your "bios"!
Dan Minard is my name & I live on the isolated central coast of British Columbia. We have a total of 40 miles of "highway" and with a ferry dock at one end & the north end of Highway 101 at the other. If you want to go somewhere else, you need a boat or an airplane. Ferries leave from here to Vancouver Island or to the "Sunshine Coast" with an hour & a half drive and a second ferry ride to the Vancouver area.
My wife & I are lucky enough to be living the dream... 5 acres of near wilderness, the ocean a short bike ride away. Clean air & water and enough separation to be somewhat isolated from the worst of the world's craziness. We call six cars in a row a traffic jam.
I am 56, have worked as a carpenter, a commercial fisherman & (for too many years) as an aircraft maintenance engineer.
I started building guitars in the early eighties, but family & career forced a hiatus until the airline I worked for offered me the choice of a lay off, or a move to the big city. I took the layoff...
In the summer, I do contract maintenance on a fleet of power & sail charter boats. The rest of the year I spend recovering from the frantic summer work, building / repairing guitars & producing small amounts of Cedar tonewood. (I mention the tonewood production only as a matter of interest, NOT to aquire new customers. All of my limited production already has a market & I absolutely don't want to step on any sponsors toes.)
I am currently adding a 10' X 26' extension to my shop for a tonewood drying room & a spray booth. Once the addition is finished, I hope to be ready to dedicate my time to building & repairs. My dream is to get enough work for the shop that I can stop doing the high stress summer yacht repair work.
I am currently working on four instruments. A commissioned BRZ "SJ" & Sapelle Weissenborne style guitar. I'm building a BRZ parlour & a Lutz topped Weiss on spec. These are serial numbers 20 through 24.
Still making mistakes & climbing the learning curve, but I love every day I can spend in the shop.

Ok, I guess it's high time I jumped in here... I'm 33, I live in Keene,NH and I'm a control room operator at a nuclear power plant. (why do I feel like i'm talking to a support group;)) I've been playing guitar for 25 years and I got interested in building from listening to Mario talk about it over on flatpick-L. I took a month off from work a few years ago and went to work with Ivon Shmuckler at the Leeds guitar making school. So for 4 weeks I learned about guitar building and flyrod making and politics and whatever else he felt like talking about I met a lot of cool people who came through the shop, including Bill Cumpiano (who's shop is across the hall). I'm now getting started on #6. so if ny of you are ever in south western New Hampshire stop in and say hello...

O.k.

My Name is joel Thompson i am a youngster at 31 years of age.
I live in london england and i run a small business called tonewood suppies for my main income (not that its much yet)
I have one daughter (with my psyco ex) and a wonderfull fiance who seems to understand me perfectly.

I dropped out of school when i was 13 due to the fact i was dyslexic and the welsh school i was dident know what the word meant.

After being home schooled by my grandfather (a famouse peace activist and historian)i studied electronic engineering and achived a h.n.d.
I then went on to work as a tech for a company that supplies mixing consoles and outboard equiptment to studios.
My specialality is vintage neve, fairchaild,emi etc compressors and e.q's and i also know alot about vintage mics etc.
whilst i was working for funky junk (the company i worked for) i fitted out many well known studios for people like coldplay,eminem,pink floyed to name but a few.

It was whilst doing this that realised that i was good with my hands and i enjoyed practical work.

But as much as i liked working in the music indutry i was very unhappy and knew that i had to find something else.
As such i started doing a part time lutherie course at merton college in london.
i enjoyed this so much i went full time and i am still there now with two month to go before leaving.

About three years ago in my first full time year at college i started selling bits of wood to fellow students as a result tonewood supplies was born and i now run that part time on the days i am not in college (2 1/2-3 a week).
I did have a final year to finish at college but tonewood supplies is so busy now that i cant continue with the optinal final year.
The plan from here is to take tonewood supplies full time as soon as poss so i can put the time in that the company needs if i am going to be able to offer you lot the service you both need and expect.

As a result i am now really happy and intend to carry on building guitars in my spare time so i can give my customers objective advice about the woods i sell.

I will never be rich man doing this but i will be happy and thats by far the most important thing to me bar none.

Joel.

I've been checking out this thread but just haven't had time to respond, thanks to my "real" job.

Looks like me and jmanter have a lot in common. I'm 36 and a control room operator/shift supervisor in a combined cycle power plant in North Texas. I've had the building bug for years and, like "j", one of my earliest influences was Mario from the 13th Fret and Flatpickin.com. Work schedules, relocation twice (from GA to TX, then again a couple of counties over) have put a damper on my building. I've just recently set my shop back up on my 10 acre place where I'm building #2 and #3 right now....when I can find time to get in the shop. I worked over 800 hours of overtime last year and this year is shaping up to be almost as bad!

Oh, aside from working overtime, setting up shop and building guitars, I'm trying to remodel a home. And landscape. And fence the property. And re-roof, re-floor, build porches, update the siding, strip all the walls for sheetrock. I'm tired now. Think I'll go to bed....

Musically, I'm a bluegrass nut through and through, although I can appreciate several style of music. You know...bluegrass, country, western.... ...but I will branch out a little more once in a while. I played in a bluegrass/southern gospel group in GA and have yet to get back in the pickin' scene very much since moving back home, but I have started playing the local Opry some. I've sang and written songs as long as I can remember, but the old "honky tonk" songs of the past got replaced with gospel songs when I gave my life to Christ. Since the honky-tonk days are gone, my music outlet is at church, home, the Opry, and what local pickin's I can make. No way I'd ever go back to the honky-tonks, though!

The power plant life has been good to me, but I'm getting ready for a change. I've got a job that most men in the area would kill to have, and I would love, if not for the shift work. I've just done it too long and am looking for an opportunity to get my nights and weekends back! I know I may have to take a healthy pay cut to do it but, hey, it's just money, right?

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Wes McMillian
Santo, TX
http://www.wesmcmillian.com

Wes, you got me beat on the overtime. I was just under 700 hours.

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Rich S

"The inconvenience of poor quality will linger long after the thrill of a bargain has been forgotten"

Howdy, Steve Kinnaird here. 54 years old, till next month.
I got bit by the lutherie bug back in '72 when my bro and I visited a builder in Atlanta named J. Rhyne. It was a revelation that guitars were not the sole property of the big factories.
A seed was planted, and here we are.
I pastor a small church in Nacogdoches, TX. That gives some flexibility to my schedule, and allows a bit of time to build and repair.
Hired my first employee last April. He's still here, and we're having a blast.

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Hi, I’m Arnt Rian. I live in Trondheim, Norway where I was born 42 years ago. I have 3 young kids and a wife, and we live in a big old house in a rural area outside town. My old parents and one of my siblings with her family live nearby. On our property are lots of spruce and birch trees, the occasional moose or deer, and a slowly evaporating layer of ice and snow as spring is coming to this peaceful, remote corner of the world. I am an architect by day, and I mostly design schools and larger public buildings; I spend a typical day on my butt in front of this computer, constantly on the phone talking to contractors and absent minded school principals (some days, like today, are really slow...)

I started playing the guitar at age 14 or so, and until my middle 20’s I played electric guitar in numerous bands and styles, before going back to school and putting playing much more on the back burner for a while. I developed more interest in acoustic guitars and acoustic music; music has always been a very important part of my life, and I am quite open to different styles and musical expressions. In addition to guitar and mandolin I also play some (amateurish) piano and violin, but currently the only thing I play in a ‘band’ is violin in a string orchestra with my daughter.

In my house I have a basement shop, currently undergoing reconstruction; the work is taking much longer than expected as life keeps interfering (what else is new?). I build steel string guitars, arch top mandolins and occasionally something really odd. I built my first instrument in 2000 after moving back to my hometown and finally being able to set up my own shop after many years of school and living in tight apartments in the “big city”. I learned most of what I know about traditional woodworking from my father when I was a kid, and as instrument making is still a hobby for me I can fart around in the workshop and take however long I want to finish things in a manner I enjoy. This includes using mostly hand tools and relatively few and simple jigs, but I do have the usual cabinet saw, band saws, jointer, sanders and routers, and I enjoy using these as well. There are not too many guitar makers up here, so I am very grateful to have found so many new friends to learn and share this passion with on the web. Without great recourses like this site, and all the generous people who show up and who are happy to share their knowledge, I don’t know where I’d be. Thanks, everybody!

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

My body is 54 but in my head I'm 18 going on 19. I graduated from Cambridge University and the London School of Economics and spent 20+ years working in telecommunacations. Then when I was 47 an offer came up that at the time was viewed as pretty mundane and boring but now is like hens teeth and gold dust - the offer of redundancy and early retirement from 50 with a salary based pension income. I worked in Ireland as a consultant for 3 years to reach this magic number and finally got a real job - making stringed instruments

I'm a maker who comes as a player of 40+years with a wide and eclectic taste in music and instruments. I've alway loved researching, planning and doing things my way and so have a view of "Tradition" similar to that of Topol's daughter in Fiddler On The Roof - I respect the things tradition teach but view it as an exploratory and evolutionary process. I think this reflects in the instruments I choose to make. I run De Faoite Stringed Instruments and sell instruments but am very much a "dilletante luthier" and couldn't/wouldn't do it without the luxury of a pension income.

I am fortunate to live in the fabulous beauty of the rolling Chiltern hills half way between London and Oxford with my wife of 34 years who is a textile artist. I have 4 gorgeous daughters and one stupid old Old English Sheepdog whom I'm priviledged to spend most of my life annoying until I'm banished to my shed

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

I am 75 years young, retired from manfacturing managment in the wood, metal, plastics, and printing industries. I am still working on my first guitar, a scratch built classical which I started a couple of years ago. I play a litle classical guitar and enjoy this forum.

Her goes my name is Alan, 55 years young, beautiful wife Kerry, a son 30 who is a proffesonal musician and a daughter 25 and she is a chef. Kerry has two sons both in their 20s and they both have careers in the Defence Force here in Oz.

I have played guitar from a young age and would have to say music is my life and passion. I have worked in the music industry here in Australia for the past 30 yrs. Five years ago i established a music teaching business here in Townsville, Queensland and it was one of the best decisions in my life. I love teaching music.

Guitar building is a new passion. I have had many years experience setting up and repairing acoustic instruments but have never tried my hand at building one. I have made seven solid body lap slide guitars which got the building bug activated!!!

In October last year 2007 after a year researching guitar building on the internet, local library i decided it was time to have a go at building an acoustic.

Another new passion is the Weissenborn Guitar. From the first time I heard one played i was hooked!!!! Currently i have two weissenborn guitars in production. As you all know by the time you tool up and make jigs etc it takes not to much more time to make two guitars at once. I intend to build in the future, two guitars at time. One weissenborn copy guitar is being built from Tasmanian Sassafrass and Myrtle the other, Tasmanian Blackwood. They are both at the bracing stage. Rims are ready, headstocks, linings, side supports glued in, fingerboards and bridges made and the tops and backs are ready to be fitted. Rosettes, soundholes all done. It has been many hours work but i have enjoyed the journey so far.

May I just say how much it has been a pleasure to meet all you people on the OLF forum and how i have learnt so much from you all.

It is a great community to be a part of!!!!

Cheers

Alan

Ok - I suppose I can lurk for only so long. Great thread. Beats the heck out of trying to picture you guys by reading between the lines of your many posts on the OLF.

I'm 49, soon to hit the big five-o this summer. I live in Oakville, Ontario in the great white north with my wonderful wife, Deb, of nearly 26 years, my 19 and 15 year old sons (Tyler and Denver) and our pooch, Winston the Airedale. I am a marketing guy; have been for my entire working life (save 2 years in Labour Relations) working for the likes of Mennen, Nabisco Brands, Duracell and Black & Decker. I left B&D in '94 and headed west to Calgary where I ran the marketing and sales department for a large residential land developer. Did that for 4 years then moved to the dark side and joined a small ad agency. Loved the creative side of the biz, hated the agency so parted company and eventually moved my family back to Ontario in 2001 (actually I moved in 2001; they joined me in 2002 - something about taking 15 months to sell a house in Calgary back then - OUCH!). For the past 7+ years I have been running the Marketing and Communications department for the greater Toronto area's largest provider of .... wait for it ....... death care services. The company I work for operates 10 cemeteries, 3 funeral homes and 3 visitation centres. Yes, a tad bit different than my previous lives but I figured, hey, if I can market this, I can market anything! Kidding aside, the company is not-for-profit and has it priorities straight; the people here are fantastic; we do good work and there is very real and compassionate meaning in what we do.

I feel a little bashful introducing myself as an OLF member because, surrounded by such talented folks as yourselves, I cannot say that I have actually built a guitar. Well, more accurately I have never finished a guitar. I have started two. The first was, let's see, oh ya, in 1974. It was in Gr. 10 high school shop and when the rest of the guys were building bookends, I was trying my hand at a scratch built classical. I got halfway through the project and school ended for the year so it was stored under my bed at home until September when I discovered the family beagle took a liking to the neck and turned it into toothpicks. Lutherie was put on hold until 1998 when I started a scratch built solid body Stratocaster knock-off (I was between jobs at the time and my son wanted an electric). Found a job and the Half-O-caster was boxed up while life got in the way. Enough 's enough and I am signed up as one of Tony Karol's students for this coming September so I can get on with what is obviously a suppressed love. TX to Tony for turning me onto the OLF. Such wisdom and an open willingness to share exists here. I look forward to being a contributing member soon some day. Until then, it's tooling up, reading up and being inspired.

Oh ya, one final note .... I've been told I'm long winded!

This is great, getting to see everybody come out of the woodwork (no pun intended), some new folks, some we haven't seen in awhile and regulars too.

Great thread, Lance!

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Hey Arnt,
Do you know my good friend Andreas Aase?
He's truly a prince among men and a tremendous musician.
I think he's got a show coming up in Trondhdeim. If you see him give him my very best.
-Charles Freeborn

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

I just turned 57 last week and have 28 year old twins. My son lives in San Diego, having way too much fun, and my daughter lives in Santa Cruz, as do I. Started working in machine shops when I was 20 making card cages for the IBM computers that had their own rooms. Who remembers those old punch cards? Made hydraulic cylinders for Boeing and parts of the amplifier that sent the pictures back from Mars. Started my own shop in 1978 and still plugging away with the same customers, and a couple of new ones. Semi retired in 2000-2004 and right now I try to make it into the shop at least 25 hours a week. Started building guitars in 2004 and just started my 5th one.

I surf, sail, ride mountain bikes, play guitar (not very well), and like to make things. Best thing I ever did was pay off my house in 1998 and stay debt free.

Oh, yeah, Tim, I remember punch cards, even the 80-column ones. First worked with an IBM 360 in school, then managed a computer room for a liquor wholesaler with a System 3. We had the most memory of anybody in town, 64 k (not megs or gigs)!

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com