When I first started building instruments, it was the Irish bouzouki/octave mandolin I was chasing. I'd been listening to Planxty and The Bothy Band, and that driving pulse of mandolins gave me the shivers!

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Well, I couldn't afford the instrument I wanted, but I had some curly cherry, a piece of pine (left over from a flooring job), and enough money for a book on how to build one! There was no turning back, the furniture I'd been building for years seemed mightily boring without any strings to strum.  

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Over the years, one obsession has led to another -- guitars, dulcimers, banjos, fiddles, pipe organs, etc., but I'll always have a soft spot for mandolin family instruments.

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I don't build under the notion of repetition. The excitement of discovery is what keeps me going, and all the instruments I build have their own voices, these mandolins being no exception.