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How To Grow Your Own Guitars
I was at a trade show a couple of years ago, and there was a stand there run by Madinter. Madinter is a Spanish Luthier supplies company. Unsurprisingly, it specialises in Spanish guitars, but when it comes to wood, it’s much the same. A piece of ebony for a fingerboard is just the same, regardless of the guitar. They have some electric wood, too. I like the fact that it is a little cheaper, and I don’t mind that the wood comes fairly unprepared. I can’t mill logs, but I can turn a rough plank into a slotted and radiused fingerboard, so I don’t need to pay someone else to do that for me.
At this trade show, Madinter were giving away packets of seeds. These seeds were for Cypress, a wood commonly used in the construction of Flamenco Guitars. The packet had the following statement on it:
With just one cypress tree we can make a hundred guitars. With a hundred guitars we can plant one hundred trees.
I really liked the sentiment so, once I had settled into my new house, I planted the seeds and waited for them to germinate. They are growing fast now, and I re-potted them at the weekend. Four saplings are shooting up.
I think it will be an amazing experience to grow a tree from seed, and build guitars from it. And I figure I’ve got a couple of decades to learn how to make a Spanish heel before my guitars are ready to harvest…
Image credit: Bill Ward’s Brickpile.
One Response to “How To Grow Your Own Guitars”
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I’ve got the same package from Madinter, too. Unfortunately there’re only two saplings out of the seeds. They are a little over one year old now. I’m planning to buy my own land and grow some trees on it soon.