An interest in musical instruments emerged in my early teens, but the resolve to actually build them myself took a little longer to take hold.
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Information was difficult to come by as I embarked on this adventure; without the luxury of the internet, and with the number of books on the subject able to be counted on the fingers of one hand, every piece of hard-won knowledge was precious.
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While backpacking around Canada in the 1980s I was fortunate to stumble upon Jean Larrivee's North Vancouver workshop. Jean was kind enough to allow me to sort through an enormous pile of Sitka spruce tops, and five of them accompanied me throughout the remainder of my travels.
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I would like to tell you that I went on to skilfully transform those tops into miraculous guitars, but the reality was more than a little sobering. Nevertheless, with stubborn determination and some encouraging words from friends and family, I continued my quest to produce worthwhile instruments.
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I've certainly learned a lot over the intervening 30 years, but the search for knowledge continues. Although my workmanship has improved in leaps and bounds over that time, I continually strive to refine and improve from one instrument to the next, drawing on online resources, feedback from players, my own experiments and ideas, and the overwhelming generosity of the international lutherie community.