Hi David, I didn't see your posting until just now. It was a pleasure to meet you today. I thought the turnout was really good today (about 30 people in all, compared to about half that number normally!). I will have a photo essay (and one short video of Richard Hoover playing Greg Nelson's famous Cumpiano book guitar!) on today's meeting on the NCAL website by tomorrow night and will post a link to it on the GAL somewhere.
To all - I must say I have had a whirlwind weekend - Friday afternoon we had Paul Schurch (a famous marquetarian) teach our local marquetry group some of his methods for enhancing furniture (which translate well to doing artistic enhacement on guitars), Saturday our National Marquetry Exhibition opened officially with a long list of well known speakers including David Marks and Greg Zall. During the day, I was invited by one of our guest critiquers, Andreas Strieve, the owner of Gallery M in Half Moon Bay, to send him my marquetry pictures to sell (yay!). Greg Zall brought along his first guitar which was made from a gorgeous set of BRW that David Marks had let him have. It is a really wonderful instrument with fine inlay detail - it won first prize at the Sonoma County Woodworking show last year. I have some photos of it that I will post tomorrow also. I tried very hard to get David Marks to part with some of his BRW stash, but he wouldn't crack....

Then, Saturday evening we had dinner with David Marks, Paul Schurch et al and had a wonderful fun time (and a bit too much wine!) - David has some great stories and is a consumate entertainer as well as a very fine craftsman and artist. Topping the weekend off with the NCAL meeting at the Santa Cruz Guitar Company and having Richard Hoover give us his insight into tuning was the icing on the cake! What a fantastic weekend!!
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Cheers,
Dave F.