Classical and Flamenco guitars since 1983

Luthier

Franz Butscher

Lora Tamayo 98

18400 Orgiva (Granada)

Spain

Tel: +34 620515164

franz@franzbutscher.com

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Preface

Overall, guitar makers can be divided into three groups. Those who make guitars for a hobby, industrial manufacturers and guitar makers. We will hear the story of a man whose parents gave him the name Franz, and who feels he belong to the third category. In reality, craftsmen should not talk, least of all about themselves, or their work. They are just craftsmen. Who asks a doctor for garden gnomes or Caesar for a book? You hear them talking and think: if you had only kept your mouth shut. But what does it matter, craftsmen are just craftsmen. In his defence we may add, however, that he is not really speaking himself, rather it is us who are listening to him. He just babbles away to himself. The same thing happens to some women when they are folding washing, for example. Let’s just listen this time.

Before virginity

Franz is going round in circles; or rather his hand is going round in circles. Franz is applying varnish. Shellac, hand-polished. That sounds noble. The finest surface treatment for guitars. Franz asked an antiques dealer about the price of a shellac polish twenty years ago and his cool reply was six hundred Deutsche Mark per square metre if there are no corners to be varnished. Should Franz not have become a varnisher instead? Shellac is noble. That is clear. What else is it good for? It is neither waterproof, nor shockproof, nor scratch-resistant, it soon comes off, it cannot withstand sweat stains and certainly no Flamenco hooligans. Shellac is noble. Franz’s hand goes round in circles, it is holding the mouse. That is what varnishers call the pad, rags from the oldest sheets folded into the shape of a mouse, with which they apply the shellac to the wood. His mouse has grown small again, in the beginning it was a wonderful yellow from that red juice made out of alcohol and beetle shit. That is what shellac is: the excrement of some exotic beetle. It is evident that Franz is an alchemist and what is more, a successful one. Who can claim to make gold out of shit? His mouse is already dirty again from all the powder and oil which he is adding in the hope that it will speed things up, so that the noble varnish becomes harder, or would softer be better? Doesn’t the varnish affect the tone significantly? OK, he must still order that powder, and what was the name of the other powder again, it was the soft tone he wanted, wasn’t it? The mouse goes round in circles. Its stomach is shiny and damp at the edges dirty, soft and hard, Franz has its tail in his hand. He has already seen it in other hands, even asked whether he might touch it. And they let him touch it, this most intimate tool of their ancient knowledge, smiling because they knew that only one who is thirsty behaves like that and also knowing that it would be of no use to him. In other hands, however, the mice were dry or damp. Large to enormous, small to tiny, round or square, or one for every occasion, look, that is noble. Franz has gone back to his small, dirty one. It has proved itself as his friend and helper. Show me your mouse and I will tell you who you are? That may well be, but who really wants to know that? The mouse goes round in circles and has been doing so for days, and from its tail hangs Franz. Of course, it does not move in circles all day long, for a quarter of an hour on one surface, but three times a day. Franz is often asked how long such shellac takes: until it is finished. How many layers then: 17, because then he stopped counting, so until it is finished. Goodness, Franz, that isn’t right either: shellac is never finished. Every two or three years the guitar comes back and then it has to be polished up, over and over again until it is no longer played or is completely mistreated. And Franz is going round in circles which is hardly surprising either. He starts sniffing 98-percent alcohol in the morning. In fact, at this concentration the alcohol enters his bloodstream through his skin from the mouse even better, but he started protecting himself against this a long time ago by wearing rubber gloves. A colleague once asked him whether that was alright, whether one could still get the right feeling for the state of the mouse like that, to which he replied that he could live with it and that the rubber gloves could even be used twice. All they needed was turning inside out after use, just like condoms. The joke did not go down that well. He had also heard the story of the old varnisher who had died not so long ago, blind, with varnisher’s scabies and half-crazy due to the poor-quality alcohol that he used. Dear Benedict, please do not condemn our Franz. The mouse goes round in circles. Franz estimates, no he calculates. One hundred and twenty revolutions a minute. Seven thousand two hundred revolutions an hour for three hours a day per guitar for eight days in a row. That comes to one hundred and sixty-two thousand eight hundred revolutions. That’s no small matter, but not the worst of it. Franz has made a mistake - small and fine. The join between the inlays is not quite right, the guitar sounds good and will not break as a result, it is only decorative, many colleagues do not do that decoration either, nobody will see it apart from his colleagues but he sees the mistake often. Very often, even. Goodness, at least twenty thousand times. Franz is modest and swears he will never repeat the mistake, or any other. The mouse which is going round in circles over and over again, Franz who is dreaming and dreaming. Is that meditation? For one whole week from morning until evening letting your right hand go round in circles. Monks are admired for this; the people walking their dogs past his window no doubt think he is crazy, or that they would like such a job too. But Franz is dreaming of that famous guitar player, that genius of music, wisdom and beauty who will one day address him with these words, “Franz, make me a guitar”. And Franz sits in the audience listening to his guitar, what it is, what it can do, what it wants to do, touched by those wonderful hands, sounding and touching other people, moved by the other's brilliant mind. He has done it, he is at the top, he is good, fantastic and famous, soon he will be wealthy. The mouse stands still. It stands there and looks up at its master, smiling and admiringly, and dissolves the four-day old surface with its wonderful resin. This invisible surface that caresses the eyes and invites the excited hand to touch it. This evenness which limits and yet reflects the world and at the same makes what lies underneath shine has a hole, a stain. The wood is exposed, it pores gape like spots, around them the silent sea. Four days later the mouse goes round in circles, it has let the spots drown in this black sea. No tinting and no more flaws. One surface meets another and reflects it, the surfaces are surfaces and as a result the edges move. That has all been done well and has been observed, considered, moistened and stroked thousands of times. It has been achieved. The customer arrives. The guitar looks out of its case. He picks it up and plays. He is happy and wants to leave. Franz picks up the guitar again and looks. There it is. This first scratch.

The thought comes before the fall

Markus lived with Franz for a long time or the other way round. In the vacations he worked at a huge tourist restaurant as a waiter. Maximum number of orders memorized: fifty. Food, drinks, repeat orders. With the Coca Cola for the fifty-first guest, his section collapsed. And you never drop anything? A waiter never drops anything, and if he does, he simply carries on, looking as if nothing had happened, and certainly not to him personally. The elegance or arrogance of the servant. Perhaps it also stems from longer ago. What could have happened to a Roman slave in that situation? Isn’t it much better not to be at the scene of the crime any more when the master looks? Franz liked that story very much, also because he imagines the faces and the attitudes and he likes to laugh. He has a cinematoscopic imagination, but unfortunately not a photographic memory. Franz doesn’t drop anything any more. One afternoon he is sitting in a bar with his coffee and the newspaper. Two stools further down is the creepiest person he knows and this creep knows it and likes to give Franz the creeps. On the stool between them lies the creep’s jacket. Franz reads his newspapers, the sports section. The jacket slips, Franz has it in his hand, the creep gawps in amazement. His mouth cannot avoid an expression of admiration. Very simple: of course, Franz has already dropped a lot of things in his workshop. His first guitar when he was varnishing it, a huge hole, his illusion, another story, finished pieces, full glue heaters - that is an awful thing; hot bone glue, freshly prepared, hardening at once on the cold floor where it does not belong, instead of in the repair which was supposed to have been ready for tomorrow morning. What is more, it will stink for days. A router in operation: twenty-two thousand revolutions per minute, freshly sharpened. That has no place in the air either, not even for a matter of seconds, nor on the floor either because normally after falling, its name is scrap and not router any more. And scrap is not just a word, it means three or four days of not being able to work in the Spanish countryside. The nearest shops are in Granada, traffic jams and nowhere to park. In ten shops they don't have the old machine any more, only some new ones and five years of avoiding mistakes and ideas down the drain, the new security will need another two years. Franz has had enough of mistakes and that is why he measures his actions so that nothing falls down any more: he only does one thing at a time, clears up although he is not like this, even sweeps after every step of the work - he can also consider his next step while he is sweeping. Franz drops something. The soundboard already braced, spruce bought on that journey - the child, his daughter, two years old alone with her mother, his wife. He bought the twenty covers with the last of his money but the highest of expectations. One of the twenty, the one which is unique and beautiful, which gleams, which shimmers, which will sound and will not break - Franz picks it up. The router falls as described. Franz lets it fall. The blade falls. In the beginning he bought a lot - twenty - one after the other. He learnt to sharpen them in the way that each one required of him. Of the twenty, three have become his own, the others were given away or buried. If the blade falls on the stone floor, it will not be the same any more. He could move his foot out of the way so that it wouldn’t hit him. It has a handle and Franz grips it. What are one hundred centimetres of air that decide between alright and repaired. Franz only follows the old rule, first your hand, then your tool, then the workpiece. Men have been doing that since the Stone Age. They stop time, look, examine and decide. Decide what to do and what to leave, what needs time, how to do it fast. Franz could be even faster if he were to add another criterion to the rule: shall I let the creep’s jacket fall in the dirt or not? He sticks to the old rule.

Tell me, master

1 Maestro? Are there such things as secrets? Without a doubt. If the master himself has forgotten why he does something in one way and not another. 2 Maestro? What do you think about this or that guitar maker? Never talk about a colleague. If you speak well of him, you make yourself small. If you speak badly of him, likewise. 3 Maestro? Does perfection exist? Art starts where perfection finishes. 4 Maestro? What does a guitar need? One gives a guitar what it needs, no more. 5 Maestro? Tastes vary. No, there are only decisions, and decisions can be good or bad. 6 Maestro? So-and-so uses wood that has been stored for fifty years. His father will have had his reasons for not using it. 7 Maestro, that is not an argument! I do not seek to convince, I seek to entice.

The master does his own sanding

This is what Franz was told: A young guitar maker comes into the master craftsman’s workshop. He is standing there sanding with a smile on his face. Master, it looks as though you even enjoy sanding. You know what, I know that no one sands as well as I do. And furthermore, I know that the guitar player for whom the guitar is intended is also pleased about it. What a wonderful attitude. Professional sanding might be boring, a lot of people use a sanding machine. He does it by hand. He could let his apprentice do it, he is standing in the background by the machines. For him there is no delegation of work, everything he can make by hand, he does himself.

Copyright © 2009 franz butscher if you like these stories, show it to your friends, and i am looking for translations to spanish and french and... thank you