in June of 2000, after living in Palo Alto,
in the San Francisco bay area, for 31
years. We bought a house on an acre and a
half, a couple of miles south of town, and
it came with an 1800 square foot shop.
What a change! I had been working in the
400 square foot basement of our home in
Palo Alto for the previous seven years.
There was so little headroom down there
that my tall friends had to stand between
the floor joists.
the shop had been unused for many years,
and was just an empty shell, needing a lot of
repair. So I spent a year and a half just
working on it, before I could start building
guitars again. Fixing it up and organizing it is
a never ending project, but it's now a
wonderfully enjoyable space to work in.
at various stages of being fixed up.
Use your back arrow to return
dropping limbs on the roof
is going to be to the right of the
central row of posts.
barrier, so it can be de-humidified.
We're a mile from the ocean.
from the outside
Thats one of my German maple flamencos on the raised
bench, in for its 100K note overhaul. Maple has its own
distinct "woody" sound.
conventional router table to the left,
and a disc sander to the right. The
plastic enclosure controls the dust.
Richard Pering, Don Bradley,
and Tom Culbertson
brother-in-law, Dave Grainger,
is in the computer business, and
keeps me well supplied--you
didn't think a guitarmaker could
afford this stuff did you?
that produces a lot of dust. It is actually
somewhat larger than the inner shop. You
can get a glimpse of it on the tool page in the
picture of the Shopsmith. It's in such a state
of disarray at the moment that I haven't taken
any pictures of it.
By the way, my favorite dust control device
is the Sears 6.5 horsepower shop vac. I have
two, which I sometimes hook up in parallel
with a plenum. At $99 on sale, it's a super
bargain. Wear ear protection.
