WHEN Vincent Schelfthaut went to the recent Bear’s Den concert in Belgium, he heard a guitar he had made being played for the first time in a concert.

To see a guitar you have made being used by a top flight band on stage must be amazing, especially when you are just 20 years old.

Vincent, from Halle in Belgium, has been through a three-year course at the International Luthier School at Antwerp. He was delighted when Bear’s Den accepted his offer to make a guitar for them.

Someone else who took a keen interest in his work was Crediton luthier Shaun Newman with whom Vincent spent a fortnight earlier this year on work experience.

Having received the commission for the Bear’s Den guitar near the end of his course, Vincent decided to spent a month with Shaun making the guitar for London-based alternative folk band Bear’s Den. They were at this year’s Glastonbury Festival.

He arrived with all the wood shrink wrapped in his luggage for the six-string acoustic guitar, which he delivered to the band in Brussels on his return from England.

Vincent had gone to Spain to choose the wood, using Indian rosewood for the back, with a spruce top (or front), mahogany neck, ebony finger board with pearl inlaid in the ebony. He used pearl for the band’s initials on the truss rod cover and inlaid a bear’s paw in the back.

Vincent is still setting up his workshop at home, getting some of his tools from Axminster. Shaun added that a lot of luthiers’ tools have to come from specialist suppliers, or they make their own and their own jigs.

He added that they have been exchanging ideas and although Vincent came first to learn from Shaun, it has been an interesting two-way process.

Vincent has been playing guitar since he was 12. His interest in ‘lutherie’ arose from his love of music and ability to make things in wood. An ideal combination.

Sue Read