Kathryn Marie Dudley, a professor of anthropology and American studies at Yale, wrote a grammatically poor yet decent opinion piece published in the NY Times Tuesday. Please disregard her attempt to slight those blaming Obama for attacking American business. She writes, “The law that investigators enforced in the August raid is indeed flawed — but not for the reasons critics cite.” Then ‘forgets’ to include what were the actual reasons for the raid on Gibson and not on Martin, Taylor, etc. who all use the same ‘illegal’ wood from the same source. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/opinion/are-guitar-makers-an-endangered-species.html
She outlined a problem that many luthiers currently live with… they are all holding material deemed illegal by the Lacey Act.
New legislation is being introduced by Congressman Jim Cooper of Tennessee called the Relief Act. Although this act does provide relief for some issues of Lacey, it does not go far enough to help most luthiers. Here are the main provisions of the act:
Grandfathering: Any foreign wood products that a person owned before May 22, 2008 (the date the Lacey Act amendments were signed into law) will be exempt from the law.
Protection: If a person has any wood that violates Lacey but didn’t know it, he or she will not be penalized, and the government cannot confiscate that individual property.
Access: The government should compile a database of forbidden wood sources on the Internet so that everyone is fairly warned.
The first two provisions have some merit. The third is ridiculous.
The first is great for you guitar and antique furniture owners. If this legislation passes, your guitars, furniture or any other finished product owned before May 22, 2008 are no longer illegal. By the way… did you know your guitar with an Indian Rosewood fretboard is illegal? Yes… if you piss off the right USFW agent, they will confiscate your guitars and whatever else they deem necessary and you will be up for a felony, fines and imprisonment. Joy!
Provision two is good in that if the legislation becomes law, a bunch of us will not be up for a $500,000 fine, 5 years in prison and a felony charge for owning wood that is illegal according to the Lacey Act.
Provision three is really pointless but could allow some bureaucrats to hire more government lackeys to $100k+ jobs and do nothing but sit around and decide who is a bad person. The Lacey Act makes it illegal for Americans to have in possession woods that were not legally (in another country) harvested, transported or whatever. A wood source that is not forbidden is the main cause of the raid on Gibson.
While these provisions are a great start for you collectors and immediate concerns of luthiers, they do not address that fact that a lot of luthiers are sitting on tens of thousands of dollars worth of wood deemed illegal by the 2008 Lacey amendment. So, the Relief Act may take away prison, fines and felonies for us, it does not deal with the retirement accounts we have in the form of lumber.
“What do you mean?”, you ask. Well, if a luthier were to build an instrument using these woods deemed illegal by Lacey, after the Relief Act passes, that instrument would still be illegal under Lacey. This means that using, selling, transporting, eating, looking at, burning, etc. any lumber from the retirement account is illegal.
What will luthiers do with their illegal retirement accounts? Maybe a government bailout is in order? (cynicism implied)
Anyone who believes that they are safe because they are an individual, or small-time dealer, or collector is living in dreamland. Anyone who thinks that because they own a guitar, mandolin or any item made of wood or animal or even space debris is safe, is dreaming. In the US, most of our items come from China. China does not observe the LACEY Act nor any other US EPA/USDA/USFW regulation placed on US citizens and business. If you buy anything made, in part, of wood from China it is most likely produced from a source or using a practice that our tradesmen in the US cannot legally acquire or process.
Contact your congressmen now and let them know that foreign laws are foreign laws and we should be focused on enforcing our own laws; even ridding ourselves of a lot of laws currently on the books. The LACEY act needs to be postponed until it can be rewritten by representatives with more knowledge on the issues.
This is not a battle over ‘GREEN’ practices. This is a battle over whether you want your wooden items fabricated in the USA by Americans or in Asia and India. How many jobs need to be shipped overseas before we wake up? If we do not use resources to produce goods here, another country will.
There are a few predictions in this post. One prediction is: China will not come to your rescue when we (the US) are so regulated that we can no longer use the sun for light.
Stay tuned. In my next post I personally take possession of the sun, all of its power and decide who gets how much!
(Substitute the word ‘my’ with “the government’s” and ‘I personally’ with ‘they’).
The porch and other obligations have kept me from building the small group of mandolins I started earlier in the year. With IBMA week right around the corner I have decided/gotten permission to quickly complete one F5 before the conference.
Finding a hundred hours between now and then will be difficult but then who needs all that sleep anyway? I do have Tim helping out in the shop. So, it should be an interesting build and we’ll see how it goes.
Resawing curly hard maple for sides.
Cutting Old Growth Honduras Mahogany for Neck, Tail and Point blocks.
Here is Tim tracing out the neck, tail and point blocks on the old growth Honduras Mahogany.
Neck, tail and point blocks in old growth Mahogany.
The raid seems to be about some ebony originating in India. Since the government hasn’t/won’t told Gibson why they are seizing materials, we do not know for sure.
Do you know where the wood and animal parts on your instrument originated? Do you know how they were shipped and when? If not… or even if you do…you may be in jeopardy of having your instrument seized by USF&W as well.
Who’s ready for a plastic guitar? Wait, that plastic is derived from crude oil which is actually ancient plant and animal goo. Your F’d.
You probably know neither the secret password nor handshake, but, I am going to blow the guild wide open and give you a summary of the GAL convention.
The Guild of American Luthiers (GAL) held its convention in Tacoma, Washington on the Pacific Lutheran University campus near the end of July. Over 400 luthiers, most from North America, attended the week-long celebration of building and repairing stringed instruments.
I left the 115 degree heat indexed Central Illinois area for the moderate temperatures of the Seattle area. Here is the high altitude gateway to Tacoma/Seattle, Mt. Rainier, from the emergency exit row window.
It was cloudy on my travel day and evening. I attended a luthier’s gathering in Seattle at Rick Davis and Cat Fox’s shop where he builds his Running Dog guitars and Cat runs the Sound Guitar Repair center. There I met several luthiers and the Stewart-MacDonald gang. Rick and Cat’s hospitality was above and beyond. The rest of the week’s weather was nearly perfect; 70′s – 80′s and clear blue skies. Here is a shot of the dormitory I called home for my stay during the conference.
Wednesday started quickly with four workshops running simultaneously.
James Condino, ‘Restoring the Vintage American Plywood Bass‘
Erick Coleman and Evan Gluck, ‘Refining Factory Setups on Electric Guitars: Going the Extra Mile‘
John Greven, ‘How to Build 48 Guitars a Year with Almost No Tooling‘
Al Carruth – physics seminar.
While I would have enjoyed attending each, I chose John Greven’s workshop. He had plenty going on in his shop at once. I attribute much of his speed to repetition and multitasking. Here is a picture of Greven’s shop… which is currently about three times larger than my current space.
Below is a swiped photo of Erick Coleman and Evan Gluck during their workshop.
Thursday morning Richard Brune gave a lecture title: ‘Lutherie: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow‘. Here he is talking about the past.
His most eyebrow raising comments were on our future with CITES and the LACEY Act. Keep all of your receipts! Anyway… in the near future if you cannot prove where you acquired your materials you might be in trouble. The Lacey Act as it is currently written is enforced by several over-lapping government agencies and they all have a slightly different interpretation of the rules. So, yes, more government regulation even hits small-time luthiers. You can read more about the CITES and the Lacey Act here. If you haven’t already, consider joining GAL.
In the future, look for a luthier who is certified by GreenerLuthier.com. This site, once complete and active, will track all of the plant and animal material on an instrument and place it under one serial number. This will allow customers, luthiers and even government thugs to quickly pull up all information about a specific instruments, what materials were used, where did they originate, photos, receipts, etc.. Hopefully this will help in border crossings, shipping overseas and even shipping from one state to another (no joke). An additional benefit will be the quickly accessible ‘stolen’ list, available to pawn brokers, instrument stores and everyone else.
Later that morning two workshops began and would run until lunch. One was a classical guitar listening session. Cuban classical guitarist, Edel Muñoz, a top ranked player, played several classical guitars.
Edel was also scheduled to be play at the Friday night concert. The concurrent workshop was by Stephen Marchione, ‘Rethinking the Semihollow Electric Guitar‘.
Following lunch, three more workshops were held:
James Ham, ‘Vacuum Sucks, and I’m Steaming!‘ (lamination and hide glue)
Don MacRostie and Gary Magliari, ‘Beyond the Rule of 18: Intonation for the 21st Century‘
Brian Michael and Alex Glasser, ‘Acoustic Guitar Repair: Sweat the Details‘
Again, I would have loved to attend all three but went to the workshop by Don MacRostie and Gary Magliari. Earlier in the week I had been talking with Don at the gathering at Rick Davis’ shop. Don introduced me to Gary Magliari and told me a bit about the work Gary had been doing with refining the intonation on stringed instruments. This intrigued me and as it turns out, Gary has done it. Through several years of research, trial and error he has improved the intonation of stringed instruments. I keep trying to build instruments here but am held by several other pending projects, but, one of the next mandolins I build will have the ‘special compensation’. I do expect this new intonation to become mainstream in the near future and musicians who do a lot of recording will be the first to benefit. Here is Gary during part of his presentation.
From 3 – 6 p.m. luthiers and suppliers were able to exhibit their instruments and supplies in two different halls. Wow, there was a lot of wonderful instruments, materials, tools and more!!! I came away light handed… spruce is light. I picked up a set of Alaska Specialty Woods – Tranquil Point Bearclaw Sitka. I saw these sets on their website but the pictures do not do it justice. This wood is, holy cow! I also got a demonstration of Chris’, at LuthierTools/CNC Linear, CNC machine. He made me a telecaster air guitar while I was there and pretty much convinced me that one of his machines is in my future. This tool will work nicely in the new building… but that’s another day.
Before leaving home I had been leveling and polishing the frets on the dreadnought I was taking. Unfortunately I forgot the bridge pins on the bench! It is hard to believe, but, there was not a single set of bridge pins available at this convention. Ok… there was one set. Chuck Ericson (The Duke of Pearl) had a set of fossilized walrus ivory pins and they were expensive. Here is some of his woolly mammoth ivory.
I decided not to buy the bridge pins and instead chose to make some from scratch. James Condino provided a spare piece of mojo-laden Adirondack spruce. It was some of the spruce harvested by Ted Davis and even had Ted’s signature… at least that is what I’m going with. I went back to the dorm and whittled away that little block until I had useable bridge pins. Here is my trusty multi-tool and the mess I created.
That evening Mark Hanson and Doug Smith, a steel string acoustic guitar duo, put on an excellent concert.
Friday morning began with K. Carlos Everett’s lecture: ‘Guitar Workshop Evolution: One Luthier’s Journey‘, followed by a group photo. See if you can find your favorite luthiers in the photo.
Later in the morning came James Ham’s, ‘Ultralight Cello and Other Heresies‘, and the steel string listening session moderated by Mike Doolin. I attended the steel string listening session and presented my latest dreadnought for consideration. Mark Hanson played several guitars finger style. Below is a photo of Mark playing as well as a smart phone video taken by Robert Carbonara, a luthier from Santa Barbara. The video is a bit grainy, but the audio worked out pretty well. The guitar is a dreadnought with Adirondack spruce top and bracing, Honduras Rosewood back and sides, African blackwood bridge, Macassar ebony and Honduras mahogany neck. By the way… that is an Infinity Guitar.
Afternoon workshops included:
James Condino, ‘Hand-Rubbed Sunburst Finishes‘
Eugene Clark, ‘Nuances of the Spanish Guitar‘
John Greven, ‘Voicing the (Entire) Steel String Guitar’
I attended the sunburst workshop. Nice work James!
The end of the afternoon was reserved for the vendors and luthiers exhibition for registered participants only.
Another event for the day, although unscheduled, was a ukulele listening session where Kimo Hussy, a renowned Hawaiian ukulele player and teacher, played the ukuleles and wowed the audience. Kimo Hussey via. Kathy Matsushita, thanks Kathy. You can read her blog here.
The evening nearly ended with the Edel Munoz concert at Lagerquist Concert Hall. Following the concert, a steel string open mic was held at the Northern Pacific Coffee house down the street. They ran out of beer.
Saturday started with an 8:30 a.m. panel discussion with David Cohen, Don MacRostie, and Lawrence Smart, on ‘The Mandolin Family: Traditional and Contemporary Perspectives’… at least that is what I was told. Following that discussion was a workshop given by Charles Fox on “Production Techniques for the Custom Luthier.” Charles brought in a lot of jigs and described their use. It was quite at odds with Greven’s workshop earlier in the week. Here is a collage of some of the jigs Charles’ brought for explanation.
Lunch was served followed by the final exhibition of luthiers’ and suppliers’ products, this time open to the public. Did you take part in Allan Corruth’s experiment on sound holes?? I can’t wait to read the full results of his testing.
At 2:30 p.m., the sale of silent auction items (lutherie items donated by individuals, all for the benefit of the Guild).
Then, one of the highlights of the convention, at 8 :00 p.m., the Guild Benefit Auction, an entertaining time for all.
Uhh… what in the world??
If you can guess what it is correctly you get a prize… much like the item pictured.
The next morning I got some breakfast and a few pics of some new friends. Here is Robert Carbonara of Carbonara Guitars – Santa Barbara, CA, me, and Dean Story of MountainHeart Guitars – Snellville, GA representing the West, Midwest and East.
During the week, ‘The News Tribune’, a Tacoma news agency, found a little time to publish a short article on the convention.
I have to say that the convention was an eye-opening experience. I learned a lot, helped out a bit and found that my attention has not gone without reward. Next stop… Alaska, then IBMA.
Custom, hand-built guitars and mandolins, restoration, repair and consignment for collectors and Bluegrass and acoustic musicians by Chris Oliver in Springfield, Illinois.
