guitars, permaculture DESIGN

STRADIVARIUS, LEO FENDER and SUSTAINABLE DESIGN...

For an example of top sustainable design you don't have to look any further than the Stradivarius violin.

Clockwise from top left: a fine Strad, a modern violin making school, he made guitars too, beautiful guitar rosette, headstock - dated 1700.

Made around three hundred years ago, well before our crazy industrial times. Around half of the possibly five hundred violins he made are still being played today. What's so great about his design? It's wonderfully suited to its purpose, uses sustainable materials, can be made without machinery, and, very importantly, it's repairable. Stradivarius only tweaked the actual design, which belongs to a lineage going much further back, see Evolution of Violin Design. The design is pretty much the pattern used by modern makers, who could step back in time into Stardivarius' workshop, pick up his tools and work along side him, quite familiar with all the processes... except maybe for a few secrets?

GUITAR MAKING - GREAT EXPERIENCE FOR ME

I was always more interested in guitars though. From about fourteen years old, I became more and more obsessed with playing them and also with all the different types and designs. It was the sixties, era of Hendrix and Cream... how could Jimi get those sounds out of the same guitar that was played by Hank Marvin in the Shadows a couple of years earlier?
I ended up with my own guitar making and repairing business in the 70's and 80's before moving into furniture, kitchens, property development then therapy, but that basic study of guitar making has always been a brilliant skill to have. I'm mostly self-taught but had a job early on helping to make reproduction antique furniture. Then I trained at the excellent Newark Tech College, where there's a famous violin making school, before working briefly for John Birch Guitars, in Birmingham.

Toni Iommi with his John Birch guitar

I hated Birmingham and couldn't get away from the place quick enough. Great experience though, I worked in the woodwork section at Birch's, shaping necks, carving tops, and doing endless, laborious, sanding-down of that super hard Canadian maple. Guitar making, especially if you're going to make all the different kinds of guitar from classical through to electric, covers so many different skills, and working with so many different materials.
So it's been brilliant to be using those skills afresh at the Zero Waste Project, at the Bike Station here in Perth. I've helped to set up the facility with Fiona McBain of Zero Waste and Mark Sinclair of the Bike Station. The space is an area off to the side of the bike main area where the bike tech guys also work, so we couldn't be making a lot of dust or noise for them. Though machinery features very heavily in woodwork generally, guitar making can all be done with hand tools, so we've set up an adaptable space around teaching people from complete beginners onwards how to use the basic saws, drills, planes etc. The bike tech guys are mostly musical instrument heads too, so who knows, maybe we'll do a bit of guitar making/maintenance again??...

DESIGNING THINGS TO BE MADE WITH HAND TOOLS - PERMACULTURE IN ACTION

This is where things have been getting really interesting for me of late, very much appropriate for our times, and for the radical change/collapse that's afoot for us all, want it or not.
Here's a few pics of a chair and plant stand I've been making using salvaged plywood, mdf and 2" x 2", some greenwood and recycled plastic - which is proving to have lots of potential.

Just the second chair I've made ever, using a lovely old dining chair as a pattern.

I designed this partly as a wee exercise for woodwork students so they can practise sawing, drilling and fixing together with a range of different materials. The assymetric top shape idea came from using up off-cuts

More about Permaculture design for everyday stuff, furniture etc, on separate post coming soon.