Son One Graduates Luthiery School

Roberto Venn Class of Spring, 2009

Son One graduated from Roberto Venn School of Luthiery on Friday, June 26th.

A luthier is someone who makes or repairs stringed instruments. The word luthier comes from the French word luth which means "lute". (Wikipedia)

Son One's Electric Guitar:

From the RV curriculum guide:

The Guitar Making and Repair Course consists of practical and theoretical training in acoustic and electric guitar construction and repair.

Students design their own headstocks, bridges, rosettes, and inlay patterns.

The finest air-dried woods are used - mahogany, rosewood, ebony, maple, walnut, spruce, cedar, redwood, koa and other woods. We use no pre-made wood parts. In addition to guitar construction, sessions are given in: milling and wood selection, guitar design, tool use and maintenance, scale and template derivation, guitar repair, finishing (lacquer, oil, stain, sunburst, and re-finishing), guitar electronics, pickup design and construction, tremolo installation, care and preservation of stringed instruments, and related subjects."

Acoustic Guitar

If you'd like to see more of the guitars made by the Spring 09 Class, please follow this LINK

Son One will be returning home soon and starting up his own luthiery business. If you need a guitar made or repaired, drop me a line, and I'll pass it on. Once he gets set up, I'll link to his business in my sidebar. Of course, I get to help with all the graphics, signs, business cards, etc. No, there won't be any Corgis on them, but there will probably be a black cat. Stay tuned . . . so to speak.

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Senior Projects

It's getting down to the wire for my high school senior. 10 more days, and he's done with school. Being an artsy type (Don't know where he gets that from), his senior project involved building an electric guitar. From scratch. (Probably because I'm too cheap to buy him a Les Paul of his own, he decided to make a Les Paul style guitar.)

It sounds intimidating to me, but... he already built one for his 4-H project, so it was not a big deal to him. Even though I'm an artist, it amazes me to see wood go from this:

to this:

I can relate to it as sculpture, because of the wood carving, the mother of pearl fret inlays, and the awesome lacquer job.

New skills obtained - learning to use a jigsaw and a router. Luckily, Dad was on hand to show him the ropes with power tools. I'm a hand tool kind of girl.

The rosewood fretboard really took it out of my hand carving tools. Gave me a good excuse to upgrade my tools for woodblock printmaking... and tell Son One to get his own set.

But the electronics were a bit over my head. Senior son was not flummoxed, however. His theory was that if he knew how electric guitars were made, he'd know how to repair and upgrade them. He also learned a valuable lesson. A little Gorilla glue goes a long way...


We estimated he put about 200 hours into building the first guitar, and about half that into the second. Mahogany body and neck, flame-maple top, rosewood fretboard, mother of pearl inlays.

I liked it just as it was shown here, a splash of clearcoat and I would have been happy, but the guitar was due a Cherry Sunburst lacquer finish

and that was what it got. It's even more spiffy looking in person, pictures don't do it justice.

So with the addition of the two hand-built electric guitars, the four other electric guitars (one seven string), the acoustic guitar, a mandolin, electric piano, saxophone, drum sticks in search of a drum, a bodhran, and tin whistles, not to mention the copies of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, complete with plastic guitars and drum pads, computer recording studio programs, and two massive amplifiers, we're pretty much set. The bodhran and tin whistles are mine, and I can play one song on each, that is the extent of my musical ability. His dad can play the radio. I seem to recall my brother and his bass guitar thumping away in the middle of the night - usually the theme song to Barney Miller, much to my annoyance - so maybe musical talent runs in the family, and it just leapfrogged over me, which is okay, I don't think we have room in the house for any more instruments. I know we're out of plug-ins to run this self contained band. So what was Son One interested in getting for graduation? A bigger amplifier.

doG help us.