Category: News

I have a quite a few projects in the works at the moment, including these four violins. Three are ready for polish and set-up and the other just needs a couple more coats of varnish. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for updates!

Several years ago a friend of my mentor’s gave me ten cello-sized billets of spruce cut in Colorado. I’ve only just now gotten around to resawing it, as I’ve bought a lot of wood since then and it was taking up too much space in my wood room in its unprocessed state.

I was hoping to get more cello tops out of it, but because of twists and knots, I was only able to get three, plus twenty-nine violin/viola tops. All the waste will either be purfling practice boards for my students or firewood.

I’ve been hard at work finishing up some projects in the white and will be spending the next few months varnishing. I don’t normally work on this many instruments at once, but for various reasons they started to pile up! I have one more violin in the works and a rib structure for a small poplar viola made, but I’ll take a few weeks to catch up on some other things in the shop before resuming work on those and then starting another cello. Stay tuned for updates!

I’ll be participating in this event next week, along with more than a dozen other New Mexican luthiers. Besides myself, there will be one other bowed stringed instrument maker, a few acoustic guitar makers. The rest are electric guitar makers, there will be an amp maker, an effects pedal maker, etc. Exotic Woods will be there. To see all the participants check out Unga Guitars on Facebook or high.desert.luthiery on Instagram.

Come check out my latest small viola and all the other great work!

I’m finally getting around to building my website! I’ll be adding more content over the next several days and weeks. Please stand by while I figure out this internet thing…