Tipperary artisan has a passion for creating musical instruments

I first met Stephen Kearney in June 2021 when he came to my farm to saw up the trunk of an old Spanish chestnut tree.
It had fallen some years previously and Stephen’s specially adapted chainsaw eliminates the need to transport these huge logs to a sawmill.

The first finished cut revealed the treasure within - a richly grained surface resembling the patterns left on the sand by a receding tide.
While Stephen was delighted with the quality of the timber, he bemoaned the fact that the log had been cut somewhat short of the eight foot that is the optimum length for a finished table.
That evening, the sawn planks of Spanish chestnut were stacked in Stephen’s homemade kiln where they would remain in a controlled drying environment for up to twelve weeks. Thereafter they would become full width tabletops.

Back at his workshop close to the village of Rossmore, Stephen relates how he got into the woodworking business.
A guitar and a mandolin lie in their cases atop a huge slab of beech. Tables are his business, but musical instruments are his passion. Stephen explains that the workshop was originally built to make musical instruments. Handing me the mandolin I’m struck by its lightness and exquisite finish.

“I made an electric guitar for my Leaving Cert woodworking project,” he says nonchalantly, and he remembers the teacher suggesting that such a project might be somewhat over ambitious.

A PRIZE
Stephen smiles as he recalls, “While I was making an electric guitar, guys beside me were making CD racks. Electric guitars are easier to make than acoustic guitars, a solid chunk of timber, rout out some cavities for the electronics and you make a neck. I had an old guitar so just pulled out all the pieces, even the fret wire and fitted them into the new guitar. It functioned and they gave me a prize for my efforts.”

Being left-handed was the incentive for Stephen to make guitars for himself and some were fashioned from the more exotic timbers such as zebrano wood.
People invariably remarked on these and, on asking where they could be bought, were told by Stephen that he made them himself.

“I was then asked if I assembled them from a kit and I said ,No, I sawed up the timber and made them myself.”
MAKING A MANDOLIN
Stephen reckons around 90 hours could go into making a mandolin and up to 110 hours for a guitar.
“The first few took a lot longer than that!” he adds. “Everything about guitar making is about symmetry. The sides are identical bookends from the one piece of timber, and if, during the curving process, one side snaps, then you have to start all over again with a new piece. It’s difficult to find good quality Irish timber to make musical instruments, you really need clean, knot-free timber,” said Stephen.

At this point I examine the mandolin a bit closer. Stephen recalls travelling to Galway to get larch wood for the top, to Ennis for sycamore to make the bottom and the bog oak for the bridge and fretboard came from Kildare. The sycamore has a rare ripple grain that shimmers beneath its lacquered finish.

DIFFERENT RESONANCE
Each wood gives a different resonance and notes can even vary in timber taken from different parts of the same tree. Guitar tops are usually made from a softwood such as spruce or cedar because these have strength as well as being light whereas the back and sides are always made from hardwoods.

Yew, walnut and sycamore, Stephen has found to be the best.
“Yew is extremely flexible but still needs to be steam bent. Straight grained knot-free timber is essential for steam bending.”
Stephen then shows me a bouzouki that he is working on at present using walnut timber and brings my attention to the relatively wide spacing between the growth rings which suggests that the tree was actually fast growing.
Guitar tops must be made from wood that has sufficient strength to bear the tension of the strings and the fast growth rate of our Irish spruce produces a timber that cannot match the strength of spruce the originates in Canada or in Scandinavia.
Apart from looking smart, the instrument needs to sound well and to demonstrate the effect a particular wood may have on the sound, Stephen reaches over for a piece of mahogany and taps it with his knuckles.

TONE
He does the same with a piece of larch and its tone is indeed noticeably different. In constructing the top, small pieces of timber are used as struts on the underside.
Stephen will tap the top at various points and, depending on the sound, may decide to add extra timber or perhaps remove some. He refers to this as voicing the top.

For the saddle and the nut of the guitar, Stephen uses cow bone which is boiled, bleached and polished to give a finish that could well pass for ivory.
The black timber used for the fretboard and the bridge was traditionally made from ebony, but for his own guitars, Stephen uses bog oak, which is really the only other black timber in existence.
As an aside Stephen mentions the Taylor Guitar Company that has started an initiative to source ebony in an environmentally sensitive way from Cameroon.

BOG OAK
It’s impressive to see a tiny 1mm strip of bog oak inlaid into a piece of larch that itself is just 2mm in thickness. We are talking of material that is wafer thin. At the mandolin’s headstock, Stephen has crafted a Celtic knot using tiny slivers of bog oak and he speaks with unbridled passion of the possibility afforded by this material that has remained underground for thousands of years now becoming part of a musical instrument.
Likewise, the idea of taking a log, sawing it up and using the timber to make a guitar never fails to amaze him.

“Every time you string up one, you get the jitters, just to play open notes, made with the planks, taken from the treeS.But you never know what use the timber is until you saw it up, it could be full of flaws,” said Stephen
All that flawed timber that Stephen has come across over the years has led to his finding another niche, in the form of single piece tabletops, worktops, counters or anything else that could be fashioned from wood, such as the huge piece of spalted beech in the workshop.

The patterned discolouration, or spalting, is caused by the infection of the timber by various fungi that result in a marbling effect of brown, yellow and peach hues with lots of irregular black lines throughout.
Stephen tells me that the client who commissioned this piece intends to use it as kitchen island and was there earlier to mark out the position for a sink.

“She picked out this particular piece because of its shape and for the black colouring in it. People like to have an input into something that is custom made and these 8 foot by 3 foot chunk of timber is something natural that will stand out among all the clean, crisp edges of the other units,” said Stephen.
Stephen ruefully suggests that making tabletops is the better way to pay the bills, but he quips, “If I didn’t have the bills, I would make musical instruments all the time. I would make them to please myself and then if I could, I would sell them on. I would make them for the sheer enjoyment.”

ARTISTIC INGENUITY
Stephen is not aware of anyone else in the family who was into woodworking or indeed music, so how did he hone his talent to this level?
“Reading, looking at YouTube videos and lots of failure” is his reply.
Earlier, Stephen mentioned that he would be willing to try anything and there is no doubting that the sense of experimentation, of stretching the possibilities, combined with an inherent artistic ingenuity has led this Tipperary man to finding his true metier.
He leaves me with a parting thought, “You can’t really do everything for money as such.”

Two books, Artisans of Clonmel and Artisans of Cashel, were published before Christmas.
They were launched as part of Clonmel Applefest and the Cashel Arts Festival. They both carry the stories of craftspeople in the community.
The Nationalist is publishing stories from both books. The article for this week was written by Pierse McCan.
Pierse McCan lives close to the village of Dualla. Married to Josephine, they have five grown-up children. He has been involved in farming for the last forty years and is currently pursuing a Masters at the University of Life.