Ihave a "Hawaii connection" that is central to my interest in the ukulele. My great-great-great grandparents were haole seafarers who married in and settled in Honolulu in 1834. My mother was a mainland girl but she was close to her Hawaiian roots, her grandfather having been a subject of the Kingdom of Hawaii who went to Seattle in the late 1800s and served there as Consul for the Kingdom. When I was a child we regularly listened to "Hawaii Calls" and she occasionally got out her 78 records of Hawaiian music and practiced the hula in full regalia. I still have her ukulele, an undistinguished "Royal Hawaiian," as well as my grandmother's wonderful Manuel Nunes made in 1907. I had my own Favilla as a child in California but gave up the ukulele about the time I went to high school and didn't get back to it for about forty-five years.

in 2010, i decided that I needed some music in my life. Naturally, I picked up the ukulele again. The next year I visited a luthier with the intention of buying a custom instrument. He generously spent quite a bit of time showing me his shop and methods. I was irresistibly drawn to the building process and set out to build one on my own. Before hearing the siren of ukulele lutherie, I had built sailboats and had also been a serious hobbyist machinist. This background has served me well. In fact, sailboats and ukuleles have two things in common: they both have to function well and nobody wants an ugly one.