Guitars by Luther

Andrew Cole-Tyson

Project Description < br /> Helping a retired man on disability fulfill his current goal of not going crazy in retirement by continuing to work with his hands. Luther was a brick mason his whole life and wanted to start making acoustic guitars and approached us about getting access to some of our sawmill scraps to tinker with. Our sawmill attracted him off the busy 2 lane road and onto our property. We now have a meaningful relationship around the topic of guitar building, and he is able to accomplish his projects on a fixed income by using scraps we freely give him combined with other 2nd hand mechanical guitar parts he gains by deconstructing guitars he gets from pawn shops. He is experimenting with the use of wood types local to us and accomplishes all this on his small back porch of his trailer where has a table saw, small hand router, circular saw, hand plane, sand paper, and a few jigs he has made to help his craftsmanship along. It has been fascinating to see someone just work with what they have on a very small budget and fearlessly end up with a nice quality product that can be used to produce music in the community! To date he has shared his guitars with his family members who play bluegrass and gospel and he records their music since he does not actually play guitar. All but the spruce for the top were scraps from the mill. He has been offered over $1,000 for his most recent guitar but at this point it means more to him to just keep it in the family to hear his son play it.

Finished Dimensions
Typical Dreadnought Size

Money Saved
$150