(gentle music) - Welcome to the "Volunteer Woodworker."

I'm your host Charles Brock.

Come with me as we drive the back roads, bringing you the story of America's finest woodworkers.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) We're going to Nashville, Tennessee to meet Dan Voight.

Dan became interested in the mandolin at an early age.

He not only wanted to play it.

He wanted to build one that would perform to his high standard.

Eventually, performance and The Art of Lutherie led him to the music city where his work is in constant demand.

Hear his story.

Let's meet Dan Voight.

- [Narrator] "Volunteer Woodworker" is funded in part by...

Since 1970, Whiteside Machine Company has been producing industrial grade router bits in Claremont, North Carolina.

Whiteside makes carbide bits for edge forming, grooving, and CNC application.

Learn more at whitesiderouterbits.com.

Real Milk Paint Company makes VOC free non-toxic milk paint available in 56 colors.

Milk paint creates a matte wood finish that can be distressed for an antique look.

Good Wood Nashville designs custom furniture and is a supplier of vintage hardwoods.

Keri Price with Keller Williams Realty has been assisting Middle Tennessee home buyers and sellers since 2013.

Mayfield Hardwood Lumber, supplying Appalachian hardwoods worldwide.

Anna's Creative Lens.

- Wow!

What a collection of mandolins.

Did you make all these?

- I did.

- Wow, so they are like your grandchildren.

They're your grand mandolins, and a guitar.

- And a guitar, that's right.

- Gosh, thank you guys.

Have y'all heard the wood shop rag?

It's the theme for the "Volunteer Woodworker."

Could you play it for us?

- We could probably get through that.

- All right.

A one and a two and a... (upbeat acoustic music) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) We're gonna find out all about Dan, his story, and he'll even show you a little bit of what he does when he makes one of these great instruments.

I'd like to thank all you guys for showing up today.

Just such a beautiful job, the wood shop rag.

Thank you very much.

Well, Dan, you do some beautiful work.

I just love your mandolins.

They're past fancy, and you're a very well known lutherie.

You do repairs and all kinds of stuff.

You haven't always done this though.

Tell us about young Dan Voight.

- Well, before I got into playing mandolin and building and doing that sort of thing, I played guitar for a number of years as a young man.

And it wasn't until I was around 16 years old where I saw someone building a kit, a mandolin kit where you order the parts and assemble them.

And since I'd always kind of been the person to do things or wanna do things myself, you know, I like to get into things and see how it works myself, I thought, well, I could do that.

Around that time, I was also interested in playing the mandolin, but looking into them and seeing how expensive they were, because on average they run a little bit more than a guitar would.

So I had decent guitars, but the mandolin I was playing didn't sound quite like how I wanted it to.

So I thought, well, maybe I can build a nice one for myself to play.

And that had always been the drive to build a mandolin was not so much for a business or that kind of thing, but just to play a mandolin or to build a mandolin that I wanted to play.

So that was the initial inspiration to start.

- Have you accomplished it?

- I have, I have built, I think my favorite mandolin that I've played is probably one that I've made.

- That's a wonderful endorsement.

- Yeah.

It's easy to make music on an instrument that's not fighting you, you know, it kind of gets out of the way.

You forget you're playing an instrument, you're just making music.

- It becomes the perfect tool.

- It does, yeah.

- Yeah, that's great.

Were you interested in art when you were a youngster?

- I was, I think as a child, I always enjoyed drawing and painting and making things, but I would spend a lot of time really committed to that.

I mean, I would spend, I remember maybe later middle school, early high school years, I would sit and draw 10, 12 hours a day.

And I think that time for one time by myself and being able to be by myself and focus on doing something really helped me see the fruits in doing things like making instruments.

And it also trained my eye on things like symmetry and curve and form and shape and all these things that all have to come together when you're building an instrument, especially something with all the curves on it like these F-style mandolins have.

- Well, music is kind of like art or a mandolin.

Music is a bunch of things coming together.

- Yeah.

- And you were attracted to music also?

- Yes, definitely.

Like I said, I started playing guitar when I was 12.

My parents both encouraged me to play to get into music, and I had guitars around the house, but I never got into it until this young man from school that I went to, he came over to my house one time and he played some actual music on this guitar that I had.

And I was just like, wow.

And that really inspired me to spend time and to really dig in and play.

And around this time, it might've been year 2000, something around there where the internet was really starting to take off.

And so there was so many resources online to learn how to play.

And so that was another thing I took up for myself is to teach myself kind of how to play the guitar.

- And you became noticed in your community or while you were maybe in school as a builder, as a player, tell us about that.

- Well, after high school, I felt the need to study further, to go to college.

And it just so happened that the local university had a guitar teacher who also taught mandolin.

So I was able to do a mandolin degree at the University of Michigan Flint, much like you would do a guitar degree or any other instrument.

And they adapted the program for mandolin.

But while I was there, yeah, the local news did a story on my building and that was nice.

- That's great.

How did you end up in Nashville, Tennessee?

- Well, I had gone to, I don't think they run this anymore.

I don't think it exists anymore, but the mandolin symposium, which Mike Marshall, the mandolin player, he headed that up.

And it was a week long of mandolin class and basically a full mandolin immersion out in Santa Cruz, California, University of San Jose.

And I went there on a scholarship.

I was able to get scholarship from my university, and I just enjoyed that so much.

And I met some people there who lived here and they said, why don't you come down here?

I mean, you're building mandolins, you're playing mandolins.

Nashville was, you know, it made sense to come here and continue the craft and to meet people and to be able to be immersed in the music here as well.

- Well, as a woodworker, there's a lot of woodworking in a mandolin.

Tell us about some of the parts of a mandolin and how wood and wire kind of come together.

- Sure, so a mandolin is made much like an archtop guitar where you have a body and then you have a neck, which the notes are selected here and strings running across.

So the strings are connected to a tailpiece, like on an archtop guitar, and they run over the bridge and down the neck and to the tuning machines here where you can adjust the tension like a guitar.

The main difference is obviously the size.

The mandolins tune like a violin.

And so the pitch is the same.

So a lot of violin music you would play translates well on mandolin.

And you have a top here which receives a vibration of the strings.

- [Charles] So this is not glued down?

- It's not.

So that will come off, and sometimes it happens on accident and that's something I have to fix for people sometimes.

But the sound is transferred through the top here and it vibrates and then comes back out through the sound holes.

And the back also vibrates sympathetically with the top, so that has a lot to do with the sound.

There are a few braces on the inside of the instrument that help support the sound and help create the tone as you hear it.

- I heard tone woods.

- Yes.

- And so what are the tone woods that are used here?

- In this particular instrument, you have an Adirondack spruce top, which are really nice because you can carve them quite thin, but they still retain their strength, so they end up vibrating quite nicely.

And they work well for instruments, especially the mandolin.

- And the tops and sides or the bottoms and sides are different, right?

- Right.

So this is some very nicely figured maple back inside.

And largely, maple is used because it's structural just to hold the shape and the form of the instrument.

The neck also is made of maple.

- But there's so much art here.

All of this little, is this binding?

- It's binding, yes.

- And this all applied and cut by hand.

- It is.

- Glued on.

- It is.

- Yeah.

- So this binding is nitrocellulose, same stuff as ping pong balls.

- Really?

Wow, didn't know that.

- But basically we mandolin makers will cut a channel or a ledge into the side of the instrument, and then this binding is bent and glued into that channel.

- Well, you've got a shop here.

- I do.

- Can you take us down and show us how you do it?

- Let's go.

- All right.

(upbeat acoustic music) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) These are tone woods.

Is this where it all starts?

- It is, so what we have here is one very highly figured maple back for a mandolin.

Two piece came out of the tree like this, and we're gonna glue it together like this and we'll carve it and this will will be the backside of a mandolin.

- Now, that is beautifully figured.

It just shimmers.

- [Dan] You would be hard pressed to find a figured maple more figured than this.

This is really outstanding.

- So, that's the back.

And then there there's material for the sides.

- That's right.

So here we have some mandolin side stock that I've sanded to thickness.

And we will steam bend this to get the shape for the perimeter of the instrument.

- And it's figured also to match - [Dan] It is.

- And that's very nice.

Yeah, very thin, but you'll steam it.

- [Dan] That's right.

- [Charles] So you can make those beautiful graceful curves that the mandolin is known for.

- That's right.

- And then for the top, what have we got?

- So for the top, we have a two piece, much like the back, but it's a different wood.

Instead of maple, we'll use Adirondack spruce.

And structurally, it's sufficient for the top, but much lighter in weight and tone wood also, because it rings.

- Let's see.

(wood thuds) You have to hang it like this.

- That's right.

There's a node here somewhere around three, four inches from that corner.

(wood dinging) You can get it to sing.

(wood tapping) - Oh, yours sings better than mine.

That's great.

Well, there's also a neck and so forth.

Can you show us those pieces?

- So here we have a mandolin neck in its early stages.

You can see here how it was one piece, this width, but we've glued on some ears to make it big enough for the headstock pattern to fit.

Also, we've routed a channel and put a truss rod in here, and the truss rod helps to counteract the tension of the strings to keep the neck straight.

- And that's important I guess, so it keeps it from having a bow, or... - That's right.

- Yeah, wonderful.

So there's a bit of engineering that goes on here.

- There is, just equalizing the tension of the strings, keeping the neck straight allows the instrument to play as easy as possible.

- Well, I've seen different styles of mandolins.

In the United States, there's an an A-model.

- That's right.

- And this is an F-5, is that what it's known as?

- Yes, the F-model, which it's known for its extra curves and appointments.

- Yeah, who designed this type of mandolin?

- Yes, so actually in the early 20th century, Gibson came out with the first F-model mandolins or the mandolins with a scroll on them.

And Lloyd Loar has popularized these F-style mandolins, and they have become sort of the foundation on which your modern F mandolin is built on today, that fundamental design.

- And so usually like with bluegrass music or old time music, it might be an F-model, but it could also be an old A-model too.

- Sure, yeah.

And A-model, they're built much in the same way, carved top, carved back, and they sound also quite the same.

I would say F-model gets a little more attention because of the flare it has in the design.

But mandolin has been around a long time before that, actually.

Mandolins used to have a flat top with a bowl back, which is a totally different construction.

And they all originate from the lute family instruments.

So there's all kinds of shapes and sizes of mandolin.

- How do you put all the parts together?

- So I had stock before here.

And we said we were gonna bend this into this shape, so that's what we have here.

And all the side pieces are glued onto these mahogany blocks here and they retain, or they hold the shape of the instrument and give some structural points.

Also, we have some lining or curved lining with small cuts here to allow you to bend and glue this piece there.

And that gives you a ledge to glue your top and your back onto the instrument.

So that's essentially the gluing surface there.

- Wow.

Now, to to curve the top and the back, it takes some special tools and a special eye.

I think the specifications are very specific.

- Yes, it's very important actually how thin the top is, how high or how low the arching is all plays a role into how it moves, the flexibility of it and how it ultimately sounds.

- Will you show us how you do it?

- Sure, let's see.

- So I see that this is an F-style top and it's arched.

In fact, it kind of recurves out this way all the way around.

It takes some special skills to be able to shape this.

Tell us about the tools and the skills.

- Sure, so we have to remove everything that's not a mandolin.

This has a couple elements to it.

It's got a peak arch here.

And like you were saying, it's got a recurve or a low point kind of around this area.

And then it's got a scroll.

So basically we just have to make all this come together and blend it all in and finalize our exterior shape of the top.

To do that, what I do is I'm gonna turn off all the lights and we'll just use this lamp here to cast shadows on the top.

And you'll see how that will help cast shadows to exaggerate the imperfections in the surface and make it easier to shape.

- All right, can't wait to do it.

- [Dan] So a few tools I'd like to use here are a gouge or a chisel that has a little curve on it.

And I like this because I can come in here and I can remove just small amounts of wood and sneak up to my line on the scroll like this.

- [Charles] And grain wise, you're moving downhill.

- [Dan] Always going downhill.

That's right.

So another tool we'll use is some sandpaper on a hard foam block.

I'll actually bend this here with my hand to conform to this shape, and that way we can smooth everything out.

(sandpaper scraping) But the more you do it, the more familiar you are with the shape of the instrument, the faster it goes.

- [Charles] And the light really makes a difference cecause you could see all the little undulations and everything, the flats and the curves and how they come together.

- It does, we can do a quick experiment.

Let's say this light was directly overhead.

Now everything looks flat.

It looks done.

- [Charles] Yeah.

- [Dan] But when it's here, you can tell that we have a lot more shaping to do.

- Right.

(upbeat acoustic music) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) (upbeat acoustic music continues) Dan, it was such a special day.

You are such an artist in so many ways.

And wood building such beautiful instruments and playing the Tennessee Waltz like no other.

Can I come back?

- Of course you can.

- Thank you.

I'm gonna be heading down the road to find a story of another great woodworker.

See you next time on the "Volunteer Woodworker."

(upbeat acoustic music) (upbeat acoustic music continues) - [Narrator] "Volunteer Woodworker" is funded in part by...

Since 1970, Whiteside Machine Company has been producing industrial grade router bits in Claremont, North Carolina.

Whiteside makes carbide bits for edge forming, grooving, and CNC application.

Learn more at whitesiderouterbits.com.

Real Milk Paint Company makes VOC free, non-toxic milk paint available in 56 colors.

Milk Paint creates a matte wood finish that can be distressed for an antique look.

Good Wood Nashville designs custom furniture and is a supplier of vintage hardwoods.

Keri Price with Keller Williams Realty has been assisting Middle Tennessee home buyers and sellers since 2013.

Mayfield Hardwood Lumber, supplying Appalachian hardwoods worldwide.

Anna's Creative Lens, crafters of resin on wood decorative arts.

Visit CharlesBrockchairmaker.com for all you need to know about woodworking.

If you'd like to learn even more, free classes in a variety of subjects are available for streaming from CharlesBrockchairmaker.com.

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