In 1978 he began teaching an annual seminar on historical lute construction in Erlangen, Germany. Sometime in the mid-’80s Bob and Tim agreed to collaborate on a print version of his course for American Lutherie. His historical lectures were reworked and published, then Tim put a camera in my hands and asked if I would like to go and take some pictures of Bob building lutes. Would I ever! To finally have a chance to be in his shop and watch him work! Besides parenthood, it was the funnest and most interesting job I’ve ever had. Over a period of five years we spent dozens of hours photographing his building procedures. It was amazing the amount of work he could accomplish over the course of a couple of days. He never seemed hurried. I never saw a misplaced chisel, knife, or saw cut. He didn’t fuss. You simply do this, and then you do this. “That’s good enough,” he’d say. Good enough, indeed! He was so organized. It all looked so easy. It was all so excellent.

Bob was fun to be around, and I always learned new things. We talked about instruments, cooking, art, cars, plants, woods, finishes, family, religion, metaphysics, and much more. He was intensely interested in everything he did. I never asked him a question on any subject that he didn’t have something interesting to say or a useful direction in which to point me, and he always had questions for me. What started as a working relationship changed to friendship and love over a period of time.

Bob helped me with lots of projects. For instance, last summer I was trying to develop a print version of Paul Schuback’s 1995 GAL Convention violin-making workshop (“An American in Mirecourt,”), but was having difficulties with the tape recordings. Many audience questions were inaudible, and the answers would often be something like, “Hold your tool like this, and cut this way, going from here to here...” I wanted to hand Paul a readable document to work on. Bob had spent a year and a half working in Paul’s shop in the early ’70s, so after doing the best I could, I asked Bob for help. He said sure, and I made the drive. He made breakfast for us, and then took about an hour to go through the transcript with me. After months of struggling, it suddenly all made sense.

Paul had given me the notes he had made as a teenage apprentice on the sequence of procedures for making a violin, and I thought that they would make a nice addition, but wasn’t having any more luck with Paul’s notes than I’d had with the transcription. I asked Bob if he could help me make sense of them, and he thought for a minute, looked at the ceiling and said, “Hmm, well first you make the form...” and he proceeded to list and explain Paul’s building procedures from beginning to end, off the top of his head. I later rewrote my notes, sent them to Paul, and he approved the seventy-five-item list with just two minor clarifications. Bob had not worked in a violin shop or made a violin for almost thirty years! But the really amazing thing is that he could just as easily and accurately have been talking about construction procedures for any of a number of other instruments, or some aspect of their historical development, of restoration protocol and procedures, of varnish making or French polishing, or peg making, or tool design and construction, or details of instrument collections throughout Europe and America, or marquetry, or of welding, or fiberglassing, or engine building, or woods, or Pacific Northwest Impressionist painters — the list goes on and on. He had an incredibly organized mind, a thirst for knowledge, and he loved to work.