Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. A couple of hundred have contributed since 2009 on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Pete Howlett. If the name rings a bell, he is the brother of Dennis Howlett who has contributed about many of his interests to this series.
Pete writes about his crafting ukuleles. The ukulele, also called Uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and became particularly popular in Hawaii.
“It was a surprise when Vinnie approached me via my brother to talk about my passions. I’m not a technologist (that’s my brother’s world) although I love the creative potential that comes with modern CNC machines, the abundance of information available on the internet, and the ability to reach people through social media who I might never have discovered in any other way. Technology has opened up a world to me that until a few years ago was largely hidden. In turn that magical combination has allowed me to pursue my passions for making, teaching and music.
In short, I’m living the dream I’ve held since 1969, when, aged 14, I attempted to build my first Les Paul copy guitar in my dad’s garden shed. Suffice to say it was a failure. As were many things along the path I chose. However, as you can see in the photo of a younger me, music has been close to my heart almost my entire life.
Back then, there were no freely available resources for people like me who wanted to learn how to build guitars. But, like my dad, I’m gifted with a natural ability to make things coupled with a determination not to let adversity stand in my way. I’m also curious. I like to discover how things work and why they work the way they do. Net-net, I pursued the life of an autodidact, learning by trial and error, picking anyone’s brains I stumbled across who was willing to lend an ear to my stream of questions. It was a long, winding and sometimes digressing path. But I was fortunate too.
Following a stint teaching (and learning) craft design and technology at high school, a certain Lt.Colonel Bill Verbeek gifted me £500 to start a furniture and craft objects making business. That would be about £2,250 in today’s money. Not a lot you might think but it felt like a small fortune to me and was enough to launch a venture that lasted seven years before I realized that bespoke furniture making is a really hard business in which to be successful. I was still building guitars but again found that (almost) no-one can make a living from one off commissions.
In another serendipitous moment, I came across a person who wanted me to make guitars for the Japanese market. That’s when I discovered that batch building is the way to go because that allowed me to spread the labor cost among many instruments. That required the development of reusable templates and learning batch methods.
1994 saw me stumble (again) across Collier Thelan who asked if I could build 6 and 8 string ukulele for the Hawaiian market. I’d never made this type of instrument but of course I said ‘yes.’ What I didn’t know then was that the craft of ukulele making was barely alive in Hawaii because educators didn’t see the preservation of Hawaiian culture as important to its children. This represented an opportunity because no-one outside of the mass producers were making this type of instrument at any sort of scale. The first two I made broke and I thought I was done but no. Collier put me in touch with the 'granddad' of bespoke luthiers in Hawaii who became my warranty guy. One night while I was crying in my beard to him, he said these cryptic words, "You use a lot of super-glue in this business!" In 1998-99 I was able to curate a musical instrument collection at Ross Music based in Akron, OH using that time to research the early American fretted string instrument manufacturing industry.
Just as the wheel of life turns in your favor, so it also brings challenges. Between 2000-2008, I made three (failed) attempts at developing a ukulele building workshop but the timing wasn’t right. For many in the stringed instrument world, ukulele was a toy rather than a serious instrument in its own right. 2008-2010 saw the wheel turn again and suddenly I found myself with an order book stretching out two years. It has largely remained that way ever since, despite my having workshop help from 2015-2018 in the shape of a young and talented enthusiast from Germany - Tom Ziegenspeck - who has gone on to carve out a making career of his own.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. In 2015 I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. PD could have been the equivalent of a death sentence to someone like me who uses his hands to create instruments. And yes, as it progresses, PD takes things away but that’s no reason to give up.
In 2016, I was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study ukulele making instruction in Hawaii and West Coast USA. It was a wonderful learning experience. As a bonus, the chance meeting of Collier in Arlington Texas came full circle 22 years later when we met again. That’s also when I learned how ukulele making was only being kept alive by grass roots efforts. It was truly eye opening and while the local builders initially viewed me with suspicion, I ended my time knowing that with so few ‘workshop’ ukulele makers around the world I should devote at least a part of my time to helping others learn the craft of making these beautiful instruments. That’s where my early training as a high school teacher (finally) merged with my passion for making.
The 2016-2018 period was when Tom and I embarked on a quest to complete the building of 300 instruments. We didn’t quite make it and after Tom returned to Germany in 2018, I acquired Boris - my first CNC machine. The idea was to use CNC techniques to develop the Revelator, a new type of thin, lightweight, electrified ukulele that could take on the sound characteristics of the wood from which each is made. Yes - each wood has its own personality and ‘moves’ the instrument tone in a variety of directions but it’s only by studying wood that you get a feel for how it works with ukulele design. Why the name Revelator? Two things: first it is a nod to the song John the Revelator by Blind Willie Johnson but also because those who heard the instrument early on said that it was a revelation in tone and sound.
CNC techniques allowed me to take out much of the grunt work associated with making while also allowing me to develop a design that would be extremely difficult to make wholly by hand tool methods and certainly impossible for myself with my Parkinsons. For example, my most recent builds have been blinged to the max with mother of pearl inlay. It’s an extravagance for sure, but do these instruments look beautiful or what?
Where are we today? I’ve just delivered the last of the Revelators I’ll ever build. That makes a total of 1,049 ukuleles I’ve built over the years. As I’m writing this, a courier has taken a crate of parts for an American maker who wants to build my Revelator design. Is this professional suicide? Not at all. I do not believe in hoarding intellectual property. I firmly believe that IP should be open source because that’s how innovation flourishes. I prefer to think of my customer as the next in line to make beautiful instruments that ukulele players want. To that extent, I recently held a pop up factory for enthusiasts to both help me finish some instruments while teaching some of the techniques I use to make ukes. Some of them want to learn for the sake of learning, others want the satisfaction of knowing they’ve built their own instrument. Still others want to learn as a springboard for their own careers. I wish them all the success in the world.
In the next few weeks, I’ll visit my customer in California, spending time to explain how the designs work, help them set up their own production line and pass on as much knowledge as possible. And then it’s on to Hawaii for a few weeks. In a very real sense, it will be a return homage to a part of the world that gave me the encouragement to learn and grow and for which I am eternally grateful..
As I reflect on the many years I’ve spent pursuing my dream, living my passion and learning my craft I’ve come to the conclusion that while some people think of me as a master luthier, in reality I’m an artisan with the emphasis on art, mostly in the form of instruments but also in furniture. One of the joys of the past year was delivering a dining table to my brother made with a book-matched burr elm top. It was a test of both my engineering skills and eye for the aesthetic that I’m told came off as an heirloom piece for his family. There’s a lot of satisfaction in that knowledge.
What of the future? I don’t know except that I’ll spend the immediate future learning and, where possible, passing on the skills I’ve acquired, especially in batch process fine instrument making. I have ideas about how ukulele design might progress. Whichever way the wheel of life turns next, I’ll be living the dream of pursuing a passion that’s provided joy for more than 50 years. Who gets a unique opportunity like that?"
Pete has quite a fan base (as you would expect with the 1,000+ ukuleles he has crafted) and several of them honor him by posting on YouTube videos playing on one of his creations. Here is one playing a blues solo.
Comments