Smal Cool Town Part 2: The Guitar Factory

After visiting the Wilson Museum we headed to a nondescript brick building a couple miles away. It houses the Huss and Dalton Guitar Factory, and we had waited for the perfect Friday to join one of their weekly tours. 

This highly specialized woodshop is nearly bursting with compact centers for each step of the guitar-making process. Mark Dalton gave us our tour. Having visited the Martin Guitar factory over a year ago, I was surprised by how much I loved the unpolished, script-less narrative of how Huss and Dalton came to discover the perfect process for crafting their fine instruments. 

I don't know the meaning of all of their reminder signs, but I was impressed by the number of considerations that are made and how many machines are used in creating these custom guitars. Mark told us about the machine that they're all scared of and the varieties of wood they love to use. He described how wood is bent and shaped, and he shared why the drying time is so important.

My favorite thing about the tour was learning all their improvised secrets. They do have an amazing machine that cuts wood through computer modeling, but many of their shop components were created in this shop after a great deal of trial and error, like forms and the fish-pump vacuum, and the hand-built drying cabinet.

I started to wonder if Mark would get tired of my photography, but I just kept snapping them, hoping to capture the main portion of the shop.

Unlike the Martin Guitar Factory there was sawdust in small amounts just about everywhere, and I felt like I had kicked someone out of their workspace--I could smell the warm oily scent of machinery as if it had just been used. 

It was a little bit of a relief to leave the shop so that everyone could get back to work. We moved to a larger adjacent building with the machine on which they cut many of their trademark components and finish the instruments with stain and lacquer.

I wonder if anyone else has had the inclination to become factory tourists like I did that day. Our kids love the show "How Things Are Made", and this was a more interactive form of that presentation.