I visited the C. F. Martin & Co. guitar manufacturing plant in Nazareth,
PA and took the factory tour. I was very impressed and also very
surprised. For some dumb reason I had expected
to see a tiny woodshop with talented luthiers using hand tools, producing a few
guitars a day. Martin Guitar certainly
has talented luthiers using hand tools, many with over 30 years of experience; but
this all takes place within a humongous factory that uses modern production
machinery to produce several hundred guitars per day. Sure, they use laser cutting of the wood and
robots for the final sanding and polishing, but the important woodcraft, all
fitting and forming, is still done proudly by hand.
I observed one craftsperson fitting the guitar neck
into the body. To me, it looked like a
nice tight fit, but it was obviously not up to Martin Guitar standards, or her
own personal standards as a luthier. She
tapped the neck out and used a very sharp chisel to shave a tiny, paper-thin
slice from each side surface. She then gave it another dry fitting before
gluing. It was now perfect. It makes me
feel good to see that exacting wood craftsmanship can still exist in such a
high production environment. 
Many of Martin guitars are custom made and have
special mother of pearl inlays. Laser
assisted, but the final inlay and fitting work is all done by hand.
If you are a serious guitar player, the Martin
Guitar factory with its spectacular guitar museum is like Mecca to Moslems or
Vatican City to Catholics. I don’t have
to tell you about it. You’ve probably
been there already. If you are a wood
crafter or love objects made from wood, I would recommend that you go out of your way to visit this place
and take the tour. It’s very impressive.
