Galloup School of Lutherie - Day 1

So today was my first day of school. First, a word about the school... Bryan Galloup is the owner and the main luthier. He has his own line of guitars which you can see by going to his website... they are beautiful. He has also been running this school for many years, and the link on the left will take you to all of that info. He has staff who help him, and it seems we are mostly with Russ as our teacher.

The shop has several rooms... the first is Bryan's workshop. Behind that is the classroom (in the picture) with many workstation/benches and one up front for the teacher to use to demonstrate. Behind that, offices, several machinery and storage rooms, and a spray booth for doing finishing. It is immaculately clean and extremely well organized, with dust collection systems throughout the building and attached to all the machines that make dust. In addition to that, there is cleanup time before lunch and before quitting time every day that all students participate in as part of developing good habits and also of just not trashing the place by sheer traffic and work.

I'm in class with 7 other "journeyman" students... 4 younger (than me) guys, and 3 older (than me, I think) guys. There are also students in the room who have finished their 2 month journeyman course and are onto more advanced work, making other instruments, etc. Also (no surprise) all guys. The only other woman in the place is Susan, who is married to Bryan and also seems to handle a lot of administrative work for the place. She's in her office mostly, it seems.

So, as expected, this is an adventure in Boyland for me...So far, they all have been pleasant and polite... but it is a different culture.

For instance... did you know that in Boyland, they don't start an 8 week course with a go-around where everyone says their name, where they're from and a little bit about why they're there? Nope.

And in Boyland, at lunchtime they don't check to see who would like to join in for lunch.... they just all hop in their trucks and drive off, apparently (so I'm told) to go eat ramen noodles or burgers (e.g. not salads or lean cuisine). Weird.

Anyway, Yesterday we had an orientation session during which we reviewed the schedule and rules and regs and got a shop tour etc. Today, we started instruction. We spent a bunch of time with anatomy of the guitar and terminology (review for most of us, but important). We learned ALL about making nuts... which is a repair staple and part of good set up work. We didn't actually practice doing it yet, but the whole process was demonstrated.

This afternoon we started on our electric guitar bodies. Even though they were already sanded, we practiced finish sanding them, so we could get a feel for how it goes. It was kind of a wax on/ wax off experience. But it is important to get the hand-feel for these steps. They have an amazing sanding table set up which is a huge table hooked up to the dust collection system so that there is a down draft that takes most of the sanding dust out of your way (and your nose and eyes, etc.)

It was a good first day. I'm tired, but happy, and I think this is going to be very cool.