I'm making a new carving plane, with inspiration and encouragement from my friend Andy Homan. It's a small (hand sized) scrub plane, to be shaped with a curved sole and radiused iron (1/4" thick!) for the big carving jobs, like roughing out the arch on a mandolin, cello or guitar. The wood is white ash, from Shelburne Farm which has a sustainable forestry program. I've also got some sugar maple for mandolin backs from there, but the wood needs to season for a few more years. Here are some in progress pics:

After the body is glued, it will be shaped, and the alignment pegs cut away. Now I need to shape a wedge for tensioning the iron, and grind the iron to shape and hone 'til it shaves the hair on the back of my hand.

Welcome to my new website, I'm very excited about finally having a web presence to fully represent my instruments, especially in terms of musical content. Please leave comments here in the blog or contact me directly to give me feedback on the site and how it functions for you.

In the shop I'm currently working on a new archtop guitar in the Campanella/violin style, as well as a mandolin and violin. Also, two of my mandolins (an F and a Due) can be currently be seen and played at The Music Emporium in Lexington, Massachussets. TME is a highly respected (and well stocked) mecca for guitars and mandolins in the Boston area. During my visit to Boston I also spent time with my cousin Neil Cleary and a morning at the Museum of Fine Arts. Having recently read The Agony and the Ectasy by Irving Stone (historical autobiography of Michelangelo Buonarotti), I felt like a sponge in the MFA, soaking in the richness of human creativity. As a craftsman, I'm also interested in technique, and love the pieces where you can get right up close and see the tool marks and brush strokes that add up to a masterful whole. It was just enough culture to get me through the rest of the Vermont winter (which is back in all it's snowy glory, btw).

Finally, the moment has come to pull together all of my materials and resources and build a new web site. Thanks to the talented folks at Legitify Studio in Burlington, it's coming together--analog and digital, ink and pixel, chisel and computer. By the time this post is published, the site should be launched and a new era of Campanellastrings.com begun.  The site is still evolving, and I hope to keep it refreshed with regular blog posts and audio sample updates featuring my instruments in the able hands of some of the players that own them.