I just got back from a three week trip to Brazil where I had a working vacation. It was great to visit family and friends again! If you have ever visited Brazil you know how good the food is. There is a ton of variety and I took full advantage of the cuisine and the beauty that this country has to offer during my stay.
 
 
The first thing I did was drop in and visit Cesar and Manoela. Most of you know them from my popular SHOP TALK LIVE STREAMS. Cesar and Manoela help keep my website up and running and also do the giveaways during the Live Streams. I bet you didn't know that they also form the Tessarin duo performing Baroque music.  
 
I also visited with Antonio Tessarin. Many years ago he taught me how to build classical guitars and I am forever grateful for the knowledge and experience he passed on to me. 
  
For the working part of my vacation I spent time with Brazilian Luthier, João Cassias, filming an upcoming online video course on how to make a semi hollow body electric guitar like the one in the picture below. This is a very fun project and one that doesn't require a lot of tooling and expertise to build. More information about this at a future date. A few years ago, João and I produced an online video course about how to make an archtop guitar. It is available at the Lutherie Academy. João makes works of art and is very well known in Brazil and abroad for his archtop guitars. 
 
UPCOMING EVENTS
This week I am building a classical guitar with a student. Once that is finished I will be preparing for the upcoming Guild of American Luthiers convention in Tacoma, Washington. I will be there presenting a lecture on Relative Humidity and how it affects the moisture content in wood. I hope to see many of you there. Unfortunately, I will need to leave the event a day early in order to be in Indiana the next day where I will be teaching an instrument finishing course with finishing expert, Jeff Jewitt, at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. Jeff and I taught this class last year and it was very popular. There is still time to enroll in this class and learn how to apply a professional high gloss finish just like the professionals do. 
 

As you can see, I have been busy and show no signs of slowing down. My 2023 schedule is completely full and I am taking reservations for folks to come and build a guitar with me in 2024. Check out my teaching schedule and contact me to reserve dates. 

If you are not able to come take a class with me in person then try using one of my online courses to build your guitar.  See the entire list of online course offerings at the Lutherie Academy. 

Happy Building.