Howdy

[Andy Birko]

Hi There, John Hall asked me to check out his forum so I thought I'd pop in.

My name is Andy Birko and I've built a couple guitars…from kits! My luthering is mostly building an instrument called the bandura for which there aren't any kits. To learn a little bit more about that you can check out my bandura making blog here: http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

I do play a bit of guitar so when I got into Luthiery about 15 years ago, I started with a simple backpacker guitar kit to cut my chops a little bit before I nose dived into scratch building. I did have some woodworking experience building furniture so I wasn't too intimidated.

After several banduras from scratch, I decided to build a proper guitar. As you may guess, there's not a lot of info on bandura making on the internet so I plagiarized…er borrowed a lot of building and design techniques from guitar makers and applied them to my banduras. Many years ago there was a big luthiers gathering in Ann Arbor Michigan which is close to my home and instead of bringing a half built bandura, I decided I'd start on a guitar so I could bring the work in progress to the gathering to ask advice on topics like voicing, bracing and what not. Since there was not much time between the announcement of the gathering and the gathering itself I decided I'd go with a kit and built myself a 000.

My profession is actually making CNC parts for luthiers, you can check out my website here: http://www.birkonium.com

Hopefully I can add to the discussions here.

Best,

-Andy Birko

[tippie53]

thanks for joining. I am glad to see you for sure.

[Darryl Young]

Howdy Andy!

Andy does a great job on fretboards!

Andy,
Glad you found your way to the KGF.

-tommy

[B. Howard]

Hi Andy, nice to see you over here as well.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Hey Andy, welcome!