Robbie Marsh runs a small plane over the face of a spruce guitar. The wood catches and snaps, leaving behind a trail of potential splinters.
He turns the guitar a few degrees and continues shaving away at the surface. This time the wood comes away smoothly in dark curls.
“You’ll cut one way, and it’ll chip out. Then you find the way it’ll want to go,” Marsh said in the fine woodworking studio at Red Rocks Community College.
Marsh, a longtime guitar player, began making his own instruments in 2007 after taking a class at Red Rocks.
His professor asked him to come back the next semester as an assistant. Now, he teaches at the college and owns a guitar making business, Marshwood Guitars.
“I’m pretty obsessed, obviously, with the instrument itself,” Marsh said.
He holds up one of his favorites. A fire maple bodied electric that he likes to play. Using color tinted lacquer and a lot of varnish, the once matte piece of wood now looks like the flank of a caramel-colored tiger.
“I do have a favorite that I’m striving to beat,” Marsh said. It is a Japanese-made Ibanez, his favorite guitar.
The luthier, or guitar maker, can spend between 10 to 12 hours just shaping the wood to make the top or bottom of one of his hollow body guitars.
And after he finishes, the guitar neck must be fitted to the body. The frets must be inlaid into the neck. And the electronics, which pick up the guitar’s sound and amplify it, are installed into the body of each guitar.
“You can have a beautiful guitar but if the frets are not done right, if the spacing between the nut and the bridge doesn’t feel right, it’s worthless,” Marsh said about the complexity of construction.
Marsh builds hollow body electric and acoustic guitars on commission for clients. He’s currently creating a walnut and rosewood electric guitar for a Chicago musician named Roy, who is a friend of the family.
The guitar will replace Roy’s previous one, which was buried in a service with his brother’s body.
Roy gave Marsh plans for exactly what he wanted. Marsh chronicles the guitar’s creation from sketches to video of body shaping on his blog, http://www.marshwoodguitars.blogspot.com.
“That’s what makes it really special to me, is building something for an individual,” Marsh said.