Following the Rules There are two approaches to making instruments. The first approach is where you decide there is one right way to build a violin, and then you have to use the wood that works with the way that…

Wood is the essential material that makes violin making possible. Living here in the Vermont countryside, there is an abundance of interesting wood growing all around me. In my fifty years of violin making, I have experimented with very different…

Learn who you are. Your level of experience and your personality are going to show in your work, and that’s the way that it should be. Don’t try to make your instruments look or sound like anyone’s but your own.…

This summer and fall, I’m working every Wednesday afternoon at the HatchSpace, a woodworking cooperative in downtown Brattleboro. It is an opportunity to experience what it is like to work in a different space, one that has lots of other…