LIFESTYLES
Wednesday, december 12, 2018
HermIsTOnHeraLd.cOm • A9
Hermiston man hand-crafts guitars
By JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN
Staff Writer
L
es McMasters picks up
his guitar and strums.
Surrounded by band-
saws, tools and hundreds of
wooden boards, he begins to
sing in a smooth tenor, pick-
ing away at the guitar he
built in that same room.
In the past 35 years, Les
McMasters has honed a
musical hobby and some
woodworking
knowledge
into an art form.
In a shop a few feet
from his Hermiston home,
McMasters spends thou-
sands of hours a year build-
ing guitars, dulcimers and
mandolins.
The craftsman behind
McMasters Guitars has long
been interested in music, and
has played the guitar since
1958, when he was high
school. Around the same
time, he began taking all the
woodshop classes his high
school offered, and parlayed
those skills into a career in
pattern-making in the U.S.
Navy.
Though he did small
repairs on his own instru-
ments, the two interests
didn’t really converge until
about 20 years later, when he
started trying to teach him-
self how to build his own
instruments.
“I had no previous knowl-
edge,” he said. “So I started
doing research.”
He began designing and
building his own instruments,
and now makes about four a
year to sell to customers.
McMasters spends at least
300 to 400 hours on each gui-
tar he makes, with some of
his most challenging projects
approaching 2,000 hours.
That time doesn’t come
cheap.
“My prices start at
$4,000,” McMasters said,
guessing he spends at least
$1,800 on parts for each
instrument. That doesn’t
include labor, he said.
For McMasters, the time
is worth the end result.
“The whole guitar, every
part of it, is very tight work,”
he said. “If you start slack-
ing on anything, the quality
is going to slip. To me, that’s
pretty much unacceptable.”
In the back room of his
shop, McMasters has a
shelf filled with thin pieces
of wood, which come from
as far away as the rainfor-
ests of Brazil and India, and
as near as the Blue Moun-
tains. He uses spruce, black
walnut, bigleaf maples and
tamaracks from Oregon and
Washington.
“We have some nice trees
here in this country,” he said.
“They’re good tone woods,
and sound very pretty.”
But some of his most
striking pieces use woods
that have become increas-
ingly difficult to get — a fact
McMasters laments. Many of
the woods he uses, like Hon-
duran Mahogany and Brazil-
ian Rosewood, are listed in
the CITES (Convention on
International Trade in Endan-
gered Species) appendix, a
list of species that are vul-
nerable or endangered, and
use of them is limited. Oth-
occasionally plays other gigs
around town, and the two of
them perform at some music
festivals throughout the year,
including the Sacagawea
Bluegrass Festival in the
Tri-Cities and a Fourth of
July festival in Fossil. They
played in a country band for
five years in Fossil.
McMasters had many
careers before he began
making guitars.
“I signed up for the U.S.
Navy, and my uncles were
diesel mechanics,” he said.
“That’s what I wanted to be.”
Because of his experi-
ence in woodworking as
a high school student, he
was instead placed in pat-
tern-making, as a preci-
sion woodworker. He would
make wooden patterns,
which would then be sent
to the foundry to make sand
molds for molten metal.
A native of Garfield,
Washington, he served four
years in the Navy, including
staff photo by e.J. Harris/east Oregonian
at the Bay of Pigs Invasion in
Les McMasters of Hermiston uses a carving chisel to shape the braces on the back a guitar at his shop Friday, Nov. Cuba.
They were capable of
30, 2018, in Hermiston.
reproducing major pieces
of equipment — as large
as a 30-foot propeller for a
ship. But a smaller item that
McMasters still has holds
special significance, as well.
On a table in his shop, he
still has the first thing he cast
in the Navy — a small lay-
out knife, with a handle fash-
ioned into the shape of a
knight’s head.
He managed a Les
Schwab in Fossil, and
moved to Hermiston for the
same job in 1977. He left,
Les McMasters uses a block plainer to shape the braces drove a truck and worked in
on the back of a guitar at his shop in Hermiston.
concrete for a while, before
going back to school to be
McMasters said while tar, she on dulcimer and an electrician. After work-
they don’t have to be per- piano, and both singing. ing for several companies,
formers, any guitar maker They play at the weekly Fid- he retired, and continued
has to have a working knowl- dler’s Nights at Avamere, a to work part-time, until he
edge of how to play the local retirement home. They decided there was only one
instrument.
have done music ministry thing he wanted to do.
“Now, I spend all my time
He and his wife Leanna for 45 years, at two Herm-
do perform — he on gui- iston churches. McMasters out here,” he said.
A Special
Guitar maker Les McMasters likes to use a wide variety
of woods in the creation of his guitars. The instrument
on the left is a Gibson jumbo styles Guitar with Bolivian
rosewood on the back and Sitka spruce on the top. The
guitar on the right is a twelve-string lady’s fancy guitar
in what McMasters has dubbed his “Oregon guitar” with
a Redwood top from southern Oregon and a back using
black walnut from Baker City.
ers are on the IUCN (Inter-
national Union for Conser-
vation of Nature) Red List,
another database of species
and their status.
“They’re being very spe-
cific with what’s being
shipped out of the country,
who’s logging and how,” he
said. “It’s OK to protect our
resources, but it can get a lit-
tle overbearing.”
Because he’s been collect-
ing woods for more than 30
years, McMasters said most
of his pieces that are now
on those lists did not qualify
when he purchased them.
To create the instrument,
McMasters puts the piece
of wood through a bandsaw,
and bookmatches the boards
— one by one, the boards
will fall off the saw, and he
opens them up like a book,
so they mirror each other.
He then uses hand tools to
work on smaller details. He
finishes the instrument with
tuners and strings that he gets
from a few small suppliers
around the U.S.
McMasters is currently
working on a guitar that he
will keep for himself. The
instrument, still not quite fin-
ished, has a deep brown back,
made of Macassar ebony, and
a spruce board for the front.
A thin border of iridescent
abalone seashell surrounds
the edge of the guitar, as well
as the sound hole. In a nearby
tray, there are several aba-
lone letters that McMasters
has carefully cut out, which
spell out his name.
“When I retire (my old)
guitar, I’ll start playing that
pretty one,” he said.
McKay Creek Estates
FREE Cognitive
Screening
Thank You
To the Friends and Supporters of
the Hermiston Lions Don Horneck
Ag-Ed Dinner & Auction
PLATINUM SPONSORS:
GOLD SPONSORS:
• Rogers Toyota of Hermiston • Barnett & Moro, P.C.
• Simplot Soil Builders • K&L Madison, LLC • Wilbur Ellis Co.
• Pioneer Seed Co. • Umatilla Electric Cooperative
SILVER SPONSORS:
• Purswell’s Pump Co. • Wheatland Insurance Center
• IRZ Consulting • Bud Rich / G-2 Farming • Elmers Irrigation
• Hawman Farms • Hansell Farms • Sunheaven Farms
• United Grain Growers • Morrow County Grain Growers
• Banner Bank
BRONZE SPONSORS:
• Miller Realty Inc. • Les Schwab Tire Center
• Eastern Oregon Telecom • Mr. Insulation Company
• Photography Plus • Columbia Harvest Foods
• First Community Credit Union • Mike & Diane Henderson
We would also like to give a shout-out and a thank you:
• Swire Coca-Cola Dave Caldwell • Columbia Crest Winery • Art Prior
• Ordnance Brewing Company • Starbucks Coff ee • Rep. Greg Smith • Horace Mann Inc
• Devon Oil • Knights of Columbus • Americus Signs • Key Club • Toni Eddy
• Hermiston Chamber of Commerce • Kuhn Law Offi ces • Destination Bartending
• City of Hermiston • Good Shepherd Health Care System • Ford Bonney • Tom Spoo
• Cole Crosthwaite • Steve Myers • Kalene Wheeler • Ruralite
A Big Thanks to these folks who donated auction items and made our event even more successful.
Is Mom a
little more
forgetful
lately?
There are many early warning signs of a
potential memory disorder, such as Alzheimer’s
disease. That’s why we’re offering a FREE
and CONFIDENTIAL cognitive screening. We
encourage anyone who is concerned about
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screening. The screening is administered by a
qualified health care professional.
To schedule your cognitive screening today, please call (541) 704-7146.
McKay Creek Estates
1601 Southgate Pl.
Pendleton, OR 97801
www.PrestigeCare.com
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Proceeds go to the Umatilla Electric Hydromania program
and local community activities in memory of Don Horneck.
Cathy Wamsley
Cottage Flowers
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Sanitary Disposal, Inc.
Umatilla Head Start
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