Michael, age 6, and his first (storebought) guitar.

Michael, age 6, and his first (storebought) guitar.

Michael brings decades of experience in woodworking and an explorer’s mind to his work. it’s his joy to head into the shop every day to build beautiful and resonant instruments.

In 2009, he decided to build his first guitar – on the dining room table! It took quite a while to build that first one; 60+ instruments later, it goes a bit quicker these days. in 2012, wanting to know more, he participated in A week-long workshop on guitar-top bracing with ervin somogyi. that, along with a lot of reading and additional workshops with the likes of Charles Fox and other master builders, kicked this instrument thing into a higher gear, now, more than ten years later, this “instrument building thing” has kinda taken over.

For the first nine years, I was building instruments in the basement shop of our home in Port Townsend,wa. After living in port townsend for 46 years, We decided to ‘up sticks’ and move (just 28 miles north) to the town of Anacortes. While moving shop isn’t for the faint of heart, the much larger space (still in a basement) was worth the four-month moving and setup process.

We now have one room for stationary tools, another for handwork and wood storage, plus a third, separate showroom space which has been acoustically improved for playing instruments. Down there is where i do my favorite things: building instruments, geeking out with tools, and playing music.

You can follow current builds as they emerge over on instgram.