The art of crafting a fine guitar
Jack Thompson of Newman Lake set out to find an activity he could do with his son. Now, it’s turning into a way to supplement his retirement income when the time comes.
Three years ago, Thompson, 56, and his son, Alex, 26, decided to take a woodworking class to learn how to make acoustic guitars.
“I just started doing this to spend some time with my son,” he said.
Thompson has been working with wood for years, building houses and cabinets. But this was his first venture into guitar making. They never actually took the class, but did their own research and learned how to do it on their own. Thompson said his son didn’t want to make the instruments from a kit.
“He wanted to do it from scratch,” he said.
The two started making their own guitars. Thompson used quilted maple he had bought while on vacation in Oregon 20 years ago. He added piping of abalone shell around the edges and an intricate detail of mother-of-pearl and abalone on the head stop. On one guitar, the design was a duck. On another, it was a hummingbird.
He spends 80 to 100 hours crafting each guitar, mostly for his own satisfaction. He has a woodshop in his garage where he cuts wood for the shell, sands it and bends it using a heated mold. / Lisa Leinberger, Spokesman-Review
Read more here: Father and son create acoustic guitars
The Spokesman-Review story says Thompson works for a paper company owned by the same company that owns that newspaper.
Thompson also has deep Hagadone News Network roots. He is the son of former Bonner County Daily Bee owner Pete Thompson and the brother of Jim Thompson, publisher of The Press.