Richard Visits C. F. Martin Guitars
 Richard went back to Nazareth for Martin Guitar's 175th birthday party and it wasn't just for the cake. Part of the festivities for Martin dealers was a more in-depth tour than what you would normally get when visiting the factory. So Richard joined about a dozen others for a tour led by our long-time pal Mike Dickinson. RJ tried to take photos when possible but, of course, was not allowed to use the flash on his digital camera and sometimes the tour was moving too quickly to get photos of every stage of construction. There are gaps, but here are a selection of the photos that turned out to be viewable.
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 The first thing you have to get used to at the Martin Guitar factory is  the tremendous scale of production. Here you can see East Indian rosewood back and sides sets being matched and graded. The photo on the right shows just one of many racks of guitar necks after rough shaping but before the fretboards are glued on. |
 See what I mean about scale? Most of what you see in these photos is mahogany and Spanish cedar. Both species are used for necks, but of course mahogany is also used for neck and tail blocks, and kerfed linings.
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 Mr. Hoffy, a longtime employee at Martin Guitars, is grading  Adirondack spruce tops, which are used on Golden Era and Authentic reissue models, plus a lot of Martin Guitar's Custom Shop orders such as our Perry Bechtel 000-28 Special models. Adirondack is by far the most expensive spruce around, and so is kept under lock and key as shown in the photo on the right. |
 There are many stacks of rims, some piled even higher than these. Notice that the neck and tail blocks are already in place, and the model code has already been laser-cut into the face of the neck blocks. Serial numbers are assigned at the earliest stage of production, and the guitar may not be completed for months afterwards.
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 I wasn’t supposed to touch anything,  of course, but when Mike wasn’t looking I couldn’t resist pulling a couple of pieces of mahogany together from different stacks to show you how Martin Guitars makes the kerfed linings that are used to hold the tops and backs to the rims (sides). First the board is given two V-shape troughs, then the kerfs (saw cuts) are added before the board is cut into four strips, which are then stacked into boxes as shown in the photo on the right. Not far away, a team of about 5 workers, both men and women, glue the linings to the upper and lower edges of the rims (see the earlier photo of a stack of rims without linings). Yes, those are wood clothespins, which Martin Guitars has been using as clamps  for this process for as long as anyone can remember. |
 The woman in the red T  shirt is gluing in rosette rings into spruce tops. Her hands were moving so quickly that I couldn’t get any decent photos of the celluloid rings being pushed into the routed circles that surround what will soon be the soundhole.
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 The woman in this photo is using vacuum presses  to glue braces to the tops (notice the “kit” of braces bundled together besides one top, with a stack of several braced tops to the left). The vacuum press assures far more even pressure than clamps or a “go-bar deck.” The second photo is a close-up of Dreadnought tops with scalloped bracing, probably for HD-28 or HD-28V models. There’s lots of final shaping left to be done. The tabs at the waist were to aid alignment in production, and will soon be removed.
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 Herringbone anyone? The different types  of herringbone strips are each bent to a specific body shape, they like to keep a lot of it on hand. In the photo to the right the guy on the right is routing the binding channel on the edges of completed guitar bodies, as you can see on the bench in the foreground. Once the binding has been glued into the routed channel, it’s held in place with tape and long linen straps until the glue has dried. At this point, the body is essentially finished, but there is still lots of sanding and scraping left to be done before the neck can be fitted. Then the neck and the body are sent to the finishing department.
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 I missed being able to take photos of most of Martin Guitars’s neck department, as they were on a break, but here you can see the templates used for checking the contours of different neck shapes. |
 Martin Guitar's finishes get sanded several  times during the lacquering process, so they have to keep track of which guitar bodies have been through each of the different sequences of spraying and sanding. |
 The robotic buffer is one of the hardest working members of the finishing team. Yes, it’s a machine, but it was programmed by mimicking the motions of a human holding a guitar body and buffing it by hand. No visitors are allowed into the room where the finishes are applied, because of the health and fire hazard. |
 There are lots of  visual aids when taking the Martin Guitars tour, shown here are the sample displays of different bracing and a few of the many different bridges used on Martin guitars. |
 A view of the factory floor from above, note the huge “pinwheel” used to join the two halves of tops and backs. This area looks like no humans are in sight, but that’s only because they were having lunch. Normally you’d see about ten people at different machines and work stations in this same area. |
 No trip to Nazareth would be complete without a trip to the old North Street factory, which is just a couple of miles from Martin Guitar’s current facility. Here’s Richard by the historic marker in front of the building, and yes, there’s a typo on the sign (C. F. Martin Sr. died in 1873, not 1867). That’s what I get for being a history nut, and an editor! |
 The old Martin Guitar factory has three floors, plus a basement.  Up under the eaves you can still find the wood shelves that were used to dry wood for several years before it was used for building guitars. In the winter, the rising heat from the radiators did the job, while in warmer months the sun took over. Martin Guitar's workers had to trudge up and down these narrow staircases carrying large boxes of guitar and ukulele parts, while views from the upper windows give you some idea of the height of the building. Today, the old factory is used for storage and a shipping depot for guitar kits and Martin Guitar strings. There are lots of AC units to be seen in the windows, but in the old days Martin Guitars counted on fans and windows for ventilation.
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