Posted on April 14, 2026April 14, 2026 by Dale Phillips It Worked for Me: Purfled Bindings It Worked for Me: Purfled Bindings by John Calkin Originally published in Ameican Lutherie #106, 2011 Some of these tips I discovered long ago, but I don’t think I ever wrote them down. Some are recent developments. They may seem obvious once you know them, but each one made a noticeable difference in the quality of my work. Huss & Dalton buys almost all its wooden binding stock from Michael Gurian. It comes prepurfled. The price is pretty good, but you have to buy a whole lay-up, which may entail as many as 100 pieces. As you might expect, Gurian makes up planks of binding stock and then saws out the individual strips. The black in a black/maple/black purfling is fiber. I assume that when the plank of binding/purfling is sawn into strips the purfling is down, and the saw blade leaves a bit of fiber burr on each corner that stands proud of the strip. If allowed to remain, the installed binding strip will sit on the burr, and if enough binding/purfling is scraped away when it is dressed to the sides, the burr is eliminated and a gap remains between the bottom black line of purfling and the rib. Finish won’t flow in there, so the gap has to be filled manually beforehand. It’s much easier to sand away the burr before binding proceeds. After the bent binding is rough-fitted to the guitar, I sand the bottom edge of the binding with an 80-grit sanding stick. The black fiber will turn to gray when sanded, and that color change is enough to tell you the job has been completed. Any more sanding will change the thickness of the bottom line, which is also to be avoided. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on April 9, 2026April 9, 2026 by Dale Phillips The Gibson Monster The Gibson Monster by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #110, 2012 To say I’m no fan of Gibson guitars is to drastically understate the case. They are seldom satisfying instruments, but my dislike is also based on the difficulties they often present to repairmen. Removing their necks is often a struggle, and by now it’s generally known that Gibson occasionally installed the neck before the top, covering the dovetail and creating a trap for unsuspecting neck resetters. The 90th anniversary model in this story upped the ante in difficulty several degrees. Please consider this a warning if you do repairs. The guitar came in as a neck reset. The action wasn’t much too high, but the guitar was too big for the woman who bought it off eBay, and the combination of factors made it difficult for her to play. I quoted her $375 for the job. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on March 3, 2026March 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Ralph Novak Meet the Maker: Ralph Novak by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #70, 2002 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume Six, 2013 There aren’t a lot of questions in this interview. Ralph’s mind is organized. I made the appointment to interview him during the 2001 GAL Convention, and when the appointed time rolled around his story poured out almost as if he were reading it — an interviewer’s dream. I’ll bet he’s always been that way. We should all be so lucky. The interview was later updated to late April 2002. How were you introduced to music and lutherie? I started with piano lessons in the third grade, and started playing guitar when I was fourteen. By the time I was fifteen I began modifying and customizing my guitars. My dad was helpful in that. He didn’t know anything about instruments, but he was an excellent woodworker, and even when I was a child he made his shop available to me. He’d show me his projects, maybe let me sand something, and answer any questions I came up with about the shop and the work. The shop was never locked up. I’d go down there and do stuff. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on February 1, 2026April 1, 2026 by Dale Phillips It Worked for Me: Radiused Dishes It Worked for Me: Radiused Dishes by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #113, 2013 Sometimes the simplest changes in the shop make a big difference in the pleasure of working. For the moment, I’ve switched to instruments somewhat smaller than guitars. The first step was to cut down my radiused dishes from 24˝ diameter to 14˝. This was done in order to reach the interior of the dishes, which I use as workboards, with cam clamps. This requires raising the dish enough to get the clamps under it, and for this I used to grab whatever wooden blocks were lying around. Said blocks always got in the way of the clamps. Most luthiers never go through this because they use a go-bar deck. I’ve built three different go-bar decks and quickly tore them down — I just don’t enjoy using them. At this point readers are probably thinking, “Why not put little legs under the dish?” D’oh! It took me years to come up with that thought. T-nuts were sunk into the bottom of the dish, legs were cut from a hefty dowel, and all-thread rod was cut into short lengths and glued into holes drilled in the ends of the dowels. The legs provide enough room for the clamp jaws, plus a skosh. Photo by John Calkin. Life is better now. The legs can still get in the way of the clamps, but life was never meant to be perfect, and it may be some time before I learn how to levitate work off my bench. It only takes seconds to remove the legs when I want to spin the dish as a sanding board. ◆
Posted on February 1, 2026March 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Origins of the Mountain Dulcimer Origins of the Mountain Dulcimer by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #34, 1993 Note to readers: The following history was the product of a research grant. However, the granting institution had a falling out with the author and refused to publish the work it had paid for. The author, for his part, had spent all the money and really didn’t care if the paper was every published. Such wastefulness shouldn’t be tolerated in a free country. Since the author is a good friend of mine, I stole it from his care and present it to you here, much condensed and free of bothersome academic footnotes. I hope you find it informative. — John Calkin I was surprised and pleased to receive this grant from the ____ Foundation, since I was on the very verge of looking for a job. At once I moved my headquarters to a bench outside the Hunterdon County Public Library, where I spent the days doing research. Evenings I spent at Frank’s Tavern, ruminating over my days’s work. My Foundation advisor tracked me down there, and, upon learning of my progress, invited me to get out of town to finish my research. In under an hour I was packed and rolling toward the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
