As a professional guitar maker of many years, I credit my early education for teaching me many things that I would love to pass on to others wanting to learn to make a guitar. In the start of my career, there were not any good books out that covered the craft of making a guitar. I was getting interested in learning how to repair an old guitar I had found. I was going through a magazine and found an ad for the Earthworks Guitar School in America. It was started by Charles Fox and based in the state of Vermont and the school is still going strong today, with a second location in California. I decided to go through the two month course and ended the class having made a nice steel string guitar.

First and foremost, the school was a disciplined environment. Everyone in the class had to always be at the same point in the process. If it meant staying up until 3 o’clock in the morning to finish, then that is what you had to do. Another aspect of the discipline that is a key to making guitars is the importance of doing the process in a certain order. Steps cannot be completed haphazardly. In order for all of the individual parts to fit together, everything must be worked on in an orderly fashion. Going through the Earthworks Guitar Making School has also given me insight into the art of teaching other people how to make guitars.

The school also taught me the importance of techniques of the craft of making a custom guitar. Most importantly, I think I find one lesson as the most important and I couldn’t have learned it anywhere else. I believe what I learned about preparing the wood before applying lacquer is one of the most valuable things I took away from the school besides the discipline. I also learned that in order to be good at guitar making, you need to possess patience.

Today, there is a larger selection of how-to books on hand making guitars but they still may not be as valuable as a hands-on, taught course like at Earthworks.

I look forward to passing on the things I learnt at Earthworks to others wanting to learn to make a guitar.

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