Official Luthiers Forum!

My neighbor is working on his doctorate at NC State University in industrial education. He asked me to be a guest lecturer to a 100-level industrial education class on the processes of guitar making. The processes I discussed included; the design plan, joinery, dimensioning, bending, routering, inlay, and finishing. I prepared a PowerPoint presentation and gave a lecture to two classes today. I brought a finished guitar, a braced top, and a set of plans. There were a lot of photos. The lectures were well received and I had a great time. I hadn’t been on a college campus during classes in a long time. It sorta highlighted were I am in life (I’m 62). …kinda melancholy, but it was a fun thing to do…

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Good for you Steve. Sounds like fun - Mike G

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guitarsbygiltzow.com

That sounds like it would have been fun to do. Maybe you planted some seeds that will grow into future luthiers!

I've also had a few opportunities to share personal expertise with people many years younger than me. Some years ago, I gave a guest lecture on photosynthesis to my daughter's kindergarten class. Somehow, I managed to get them interested and it was pretty fun, actually. No PowerPoint, but I did have real live plants as props. Another was an invited lecture about what it was like to work in bio-tech as part of a careers conference for biology graduate students and post-doctoral researchers at Michigan State. In 2001, the default career pathway was still pretty strongly biased toward going into academic research after getting a PhD degree. Choosing to go into biotech instead was still seen by many established academics in the field as somehow impure and a sell-out. A number of the grad students and postdocs told me afterwards that I had directly addressed many of their big career questions and worries, and I managed to rattle some cages and piss off some of the professors in attendance, so it was a big success as far as I was concerned. Surprisingly to me, I was even invited back for repeat lecture a few years later by the event organizer.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Cool!

I bet the students enjoyed that very much, a nice little brake from their routine and they get to see some real use design concepts. It's not easy to get up in front of a lot of people like that but it's always easier when you really know your stuff too.