The timeline begins in 1972.
A friend, Tony Andrews, came up with the idea of making a stick dulcimer. The school wood-work teacher Don Jones was patient enough to help us through it.
About 20 years later.
I rescued a banjolele and a flat-backed mandolin from a local junk shop. With the help of a great neighbour I made the banjolele playable. It took another fifteen years to get round to repairing the mandolin.
2005
A guitar belonging to a friend of my daughter was very badly damaged - the "You'd be better off using your money to buy a new one" sort of damage. My daughter had told him that I'd recently repaired a mandolin and he offered me the parts in case I could make use of the hardware or any of the wood. I took it from him and managed to piece the guitar back together. When I showed him the repaired guitar he was overwhelmed and asked if he could buy it back.
With that I bought a kit to make a 000 guitar but hesitated. A chance meeting with local luthier Kif Wood led to his telling me that "All you'll learn from making a kit is how to glue a few bits of wood together" and that he could show me how to make a guitar. So with Kif's guidance I was introduced to the wonderful world of guitar making and made my first instrument from scratch.
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