I learned to build violins by studying under the master violin maker Otis A. Tomas of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and to restore and repair these instruments at Minnesota State College Southeast in Red Wing, MN. I have also gleaned much of what I know from a decade and more of studying traditional woodworking and other handcrafts, boat building, furniture making, leather work, house carpentry, blacksmithing, et cetera. I play the fiddle, as well, an admirer and student of ragtime, blues, early jazz, old time, Irish, Scottish, and Cape Breton fiddle, country and western swing, and so forth. Violin making is for me an elemental process, a sort of alchemy through which rough blocks of wood are transformed into the instruments of raw musical expression. I strive to produce instruments that draw upon the mastery of the old Italian makers, while maintaining a voice unique to their own time and place.