Hello all! My name's Brian, I'm a 23 year old aspiring professional maker from the suburbs of New York City. I built my first guitar shaped object at 13 and have been learning and building for the past 10 years. At 20 I decided to take a semester off from college to travel to La Herradura, Granada province Spain to take a month long master class in classical guitar making from Stephen Hill. That semester off has been ongoing as after the course I was offered an apprenticeship with another maker in the mountains of Malaga Spain.
I returned to New York at the end of 2017 and took a job at a local independent craft beer bar to make extra cash while building. That initial barback job quickly led to me becoming the manager with very little time to spend on the craft. After two and a half years of slinging heady beers I decided to put that life on the back burner and focus on guitar making so I packed my bags and boarded an A330 from JFK to AGP on March 1st to work in Stephen Hill's shop once more.
Two weeks after my arrival the scale of Covid-19 became evident and the entire country closed down. I opted to stick it out and have been quarantined for a little over 5 weeks. Despite the quarantine I've been able to spend some time in the shop and would like to share some photos of my work thus far. I know classical guitars aren't the norm for this forum but thought given most people are at home with little else to do a different style of construction would be interesting.
My plan is to focus on classical guitars mainly in the future but my 10 year love affair with steel string guitars continues; before I flew to Spain I completed jigs and molds to build my original interpretation of the classic Martin OM shape. I look forward to sharing photos of that when I eventually return to the states.
Here's my progress on a 650mm scale length concert guitar:
