Posted on June 24, 2026June 24, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Robert Anderson Meet the Maker: Robert Anderson by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 Robert Anderson took the long road to banjo building, just as so many of us have approached lutherie. The instrument first came to his attention during a TV appearance by Eddie Peabody, but the desire to play came from Earl Scruggs via the movie Bonnie and Clyde. “My first banjo was a tenor because I didn’t know any better.” That’s a mistake many beginners have made. Once set on the right path, he acquired a cheap 5-string banjo just before starting college at Kent State in Ohio. As luck would have it, as he moved into his dorm room he heard bluegrass-style banjo being played in the room next door. His dorm neighbor, Ken Serger, became his first banjo instructor. 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 June 16, 2026June 16, 2026 by Dale Phillips Two-Step Cutaway Bending Two-Step Cutaway Bending by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #78, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Bending a venetian cutaway with a particularly tight horn presents a challenge. At Huss & Dalton we tried several times to alter our Fox side bender to reliably create tight cutaways, but with very little success. The add-on bending unit usually seen on benders worked well for blunt cutaways, but when the radii got small, the bender crapped out. OK, this admittedly depended on the type of wood involved. Indian rosewood is so accommodating that we often got away with completing the whole job on the Fox bender. Mahogany wasn’t quite as obliging but is cheap enough that an occasional broken side is no reason for tears. Koa was the driving force behind our search for a better system. It was frequently requested by the discriminating fingerstylists who seem to be the guitarists who want cutaway guitars in fancy varieties of wood. Killer sets of koa are also very expensive and become more so every time they are ordered. Other curly woods are just as hard to bend, but a broken piece of fancy walnut (just to pick a species) isn’t the heartbreaker that shattered koa is. The H&D model MJC was our particular bugaboo. Other builders use tighter cutaways, but the MJC was plenty tight enough to drive Jeff (Huss) and Mark (Dalton) close to distraction. There were frequent war councils among shop members about how to conquer the problem, but most of the ideas and all the tool making fell to Mark. The problem wasn’t bending the horn itself. The spring-steel slats of the bending sandwich supported the wood as it went around the horn enough to prevent breakage. It was the inside bend of the cutaway that caused all the problems. The slats simply couldn’t be pulled tight enough during bending to support the wood. There’s no need to elaborate on the failures. Eventually a bending machine was made dedicated to the MJC (Photo 1). Various methods of bending the wood around the cutaway shoe were tried to no avail. The solution turned out to be bending the wood in two stages. 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 June 3, 2026June 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips It Worked for Me: Sawdust in Fretboard Slots It Worked for Me: Sawdust in Fretboard Slots by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 When I worked in the dusty machine room at Huss & Dalton, it would occasionally happen that the technician doing the fretting would show up, remove the trapdoor of the table-saw base, and dip a coffee can full of the sawdust. If the saw base had recently been cleaned, the tech became very disgruntled as he stalked away. It was very mysterious. H&D had always used superglue to secure the frets. The slots were widened with a Dremel tool to make the frets a press fit. Once the fretboard was nicely leveled and sanded, the sawdust was rubbed across the slots until they were firmly packed. A heavy coat of bowling-alley wax was then applied to the fretboard right over the filled slots. The sawdust filler was then blown out of the slots with compressed air, leaving the slots wax free. The frets were glued in a few at a time using clamps and special cauls, and any squeeze-out readily popped free of the waxed wood using a small chisel. When a refret was called for, the old frets were lifted out after a large soldering iron was used to liquefy the superglue, which either evaporated or soaked into the sides of the slots. There was never a trace of chipout. Any playing wear was sanded out of the wood and the fretting process repeated. Mystery solved. ◆
Posted on April 30, 2026April 30, 2026 by Dale Phillips Making Bridge Plates: A Huss & Dalton Shop Story Making Bridge Plates: A Huss & Dalton Shop Story by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #75, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Consider the humble bridge plate. There’s no consensus on its shape, size, the material it should be made from, or even its real function. Certainly it supports the ball ends of the strings and protects the top wood from damage. But is it a brace that helps prevent top deformation? Does it help shape or alter the voice of the guitar? Does it really give bridge support? You tell me; I really don’t want to get in on the argument. Vintage Martin people have definite ideas about what size and shape the bridge plate should be, and it better be made of maple. Most guitarists probably don’t give a thought to the bridge plate, which places it firmly in the lap of the luthier. 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 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.
