Construction and design

I build my instruments in the Old School at Whitley Chapel, a small village in the North of England. Whitley Chapel is in the hills above the market town of Hexham, just below open moorland. It's about fifty miles south of the Scottish border and a dozen miles or so from Hadrian’s Wall.

The school makes a great workshop; big windows giving lots of light and looking onto a country road and green fields. I’ve divided it up into two handwork rooms with a machine room in between. With wood stacked all around and jigs and moulds hanging on the walls, it’s a battle for space. It’s hard to believe how spacious it seemed when I moved here in 1979.
 

This is the main handwork room where most instrument building takes place. It's well lit with both natural and artificial light and is permanently heated. The wood I plan to use in the near future is stacked high up on shelves around the room, separated by laths to allow the warm air to circulate and dry it.

Despite plentiful work surfaces and cupboards, thirty years accumulation of timber, tools and all sorts of odds and ends make it a constant struggle to keep this the orderly work space I'm happy working in.

This is the machine room, containing a table saw, two planers, a band saw, a flat-bed sander, a router table, a drill press and two dust extractors. Also a variety of draws, cupboards and shelves containing power tools and general clutter. Such as the nuts and bolts that have no value but are always urgently needed just after the shops close.

Most of the time the machines stand around  unused, but they are in fact invaluable. The table saw and planer mostly cut the larger boards into useable sizes, daunting jobs to do by hand, while the band-saw and flat-bed sander are used more in actual instrument construction.

Handwork and factory building

While appreciating the benefits of computerised machinery, I'm also aware of the disadvantages. Computers and computer controlled machinery can of course perform tasks with accuracy and speed, but skilled men with hand tools have for centuries been performing the same tasks with equal accuracy and more flexibility. Fitting one piece of wood  so as to fit exactly an existing assembly requires decisions and adjustments that machines and computers can't make.

The best of today’s luthiers combine the skill of traditional craftsmen with power tools and well-thought out jigs to produce consistently outstanding instruments. Factories using computer controlled machinery and production line techniques can build much faster, but without the ability to match each process and each piece of wood to the preceding one that is so important to the construction of a great instrument.

Hand building enables me to build to designs that give the best sound and appearance; I make no compromises to suit machine construction or to speed up building. And  I don't work to deadlines. From basic features, such as carved soundboards and minimum stress construction, to cosmetic details like wood bindings and mitred purfling joints, I take whatever time is required.
 

Design

Along with choice of materials, the design of any instrument is fundamental to both its sound and appearance. I particularly value a bass sound that stays clear and doesn’t break up and become indistinct when played hard, and a treble that springs out with life and energy. All my designs and developments have been aimed at achieving this sound.

My instruments are not ornate; I believe that beauty is achieved by the use of handsome materials and harmonious design rather than heavy ornamentation.

I’ve examined and questioned traditional construction and design, keeping those aspects I found to work well but using my own techniques when these make better instruments. So my instruments have both a unique construction and a unique sound.

Development

My modern citterns and guitars are direct developments of my original instruments, though they have changed greatly over the years. My original concept of minimum stress construction, rigid neck joint, and curved or carved soundboard remains the same, but bracing patterns, soundboard shape, bridge shape and size have all changed, as well as many construction details.

Around one in four of the instruments I build is experimental in some way, either in the use of different woods or a design change. These experiments can be the result of a logical idea or simply intuitive. Intuition is dependant on information absorbed, perhaps unconciously, over the years. Experimenting and thinking about the results does not always lead to obvious conclusions, but adds to the the store of information that both logical and intuitive decisions draw on in the future.

New World guitar