While helping a friend move, I discovered a box with a Martin Guitar kit inside. Deciding to put it together, I started reading all the books I could find about guitar making. Building the guitar proved frustratingly difficult with my minimal woodworking tools and experience. After some research, I decided to go to Phoenix, AZ, to the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery. I completed the Martin kit there as well as several other instruments.

Upon completing the instruction in 1995, I got married and my wife and I moved to Nambe NM just north of Santa Fe, NM. I was lucky enough to have a kind landlord and neighbor, who let me work out of his small shop with some of his woodworking tools. Thus began Furnace Mountain Guitar Works and my career as a full time builder and repairperson. I did a lot of work for a Santa Fe music store called The Candyman. I was taking orders for custom instruments and building steel string acoustic guitars and mandolins, as well as a variety of solid body electrics: guitars, basses, mandolins and banjos.

In 1998, we moved back to Virginia and started a family. Since then, I have done all sorts of woodworking and carpentry to finance my family and the newly built workshop.

One of the places I worked for several years was a custom stairbuilding and millwork shop. It was here I met Stuart Orser who is a fine woodworker and musician. Since the spring of 2006 Stuart has been helping out with repairs and has built several fine instruments that include banjos, mandolins , violins and guitars.

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