Becoming a part time luthier part 4

I decided to build another arch-top guitar according to Benedetto's book. I purchased a Western Red Cedar one-inch-thick quarter-sawn slab to use as a soundboard. I made up the rest of it from slavaged timber. I took about a year on this guitar, fitting building in between other work activities and commitments. I ended up with a lovely guitar and I still have this one too and I love playing it. I poured myself into this instrument wanting it to be as best as I could make it. I'm still fussing around with this instrument trying to make it better. Recently I worked on lowering the action as it was a bit high making it much more playable on the higher frets. I may refinish this guitar at some stage. I'd like to try giving it a sunburst finish or something similar. Around this time I also built a mandolin that I think back on as a fine instrument. It had a hand-cut dovetail neck joint that I was very proud of. The soundboard was King William Pine, a lovely Tasmanian soundboard timber that is hard to come by nowadays. I sold it to my local Music store to sell on and I assume it's still out there somewhere. If the owner reads this I love to find out where it is now. I also around this time built an electric guitar, a Les Paul Jr style guitar fitted with a Gibson p90 that I purchased from Gerard Gilet. It sounded lovely through my Guyatone amp, ballsy and vintage-sounding. I also sold this one to a music store. I assume this guitar is also out there somewhere hopefully giving good times and good service. I kept building all sorts of guitars and mandolins and sold a few more. Many of the instruments I have made give me a bittersweet feeling as I think about how I could improve on them. I always remember them and how it was building them and wonder where they are now. I know this sounds romantic and sentimental but they are much more than just numbers to me. Each instrument is a journey of discovery and I feel that they are never really finished as I'm always looking at ways of making them look, sound and play better. Having said that, I don't strive for perfection, not in the conventional sense. A couple of years ago I bought Trevor Gore and Gerard Gilet's two volume tome Contemporary Acoustic Guitar: Design and Build. I was overwhelmed by it. There is so much information in these two volumes that I couldn't take it all in. I consult it frequently and am still making sense of it. I also thought that some of what it describes is not the direction I want to go in. I don't want to reinvent the guitar. I like my instruments to have rustic look and sound. The book, however does emphasis the importance of craftsmanship in the traditional sense and this is so important in today's world where guitars are mostly made with CAD and computer-controlled machinery. I have little interest in building this way, having to see an instrument as a product. For this reason I like to things with hand tools as much as possible and I like researching old-world methods. I don't claim to be an expert and realize there are probably others that know more than I. While I'd love to make more money from what I do I've yet to work out how. I suspect that to do so would turn it into a business and I think this may spoil it for me, with the focus on efficiency and meeting deadlines. More soon...