Official Luthiers Forum!

I’ll join you on that.

Here’s what I know after reading this thread. I’m a newer guy and I don’t post often, but I’ll be keeping my pics to myself when some of you guys are around. Jesus. I get the whole let’s be honest with each other thing but some of the previous comments have been ball busters.

That is the opposite of what this place should be about (IMHO). I would hope you don't take this thread as representative of this place as a whole. As far as I am concerned, this community benefits from having work of all levels displayed proudly. I wish I did it more. The truly exceptional, awe inspiring work is great to help me see where I want to be and the comments about specifics of that work help guide me to things I hadn't really considered (a point I was trying to make earlier albeit awkwardly). Seeing pictures of less experienced makers (as WUD puts it "warts and all") is a great help for others/new makers who may be self conscious after seeing some of the really wonderful work posted here. No one benefits from hiding their efforts.

My experience has been that it is somewhat difficult to pry constructive criticism from people here. I get that it is nice to be encouraging and say nice things but I have asked for critique and pointed out things I was unhappy about in my own work. The common response is something like "you shouldn't point out your mistakes since you see them more than everyone else." I get that, but I like to have conversations on how to do it better or better design decisions. There may be a simple tip out there that I have never picked up. . . To your point, there have been a couple of threads/comments lately that came off as more harsh than helpful. I hope that is the exception going forward.

Hopefully, people aren't getting scared away from sharing. Not that I am great at this stuff but my work really turned a corner once I started putting it in front of other makers and talking about it.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

What Bryan said, +1

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.