Richard Callis’s love affair with the mandolin grew out of a piece of bad luck.
A longtime bluegrass singer, the Mathews resident played the guitar for many years. Then he began having pain in his shoulder, and he found out he had developed a rotator cuff problem. He could no longer extend his arm up the neck of the instrument, ending his days as a guitar player.
But one day when Callis was in Winter Sound, a Gloucester Point music store, he came across a low-cost mandolin and decided to take it home. He discovered that the smaller size and shorter neck of the instrument posed no problems for his shoulder, and he’s been playing one ever since.
The only problem with playing the mandolin, said Callis, was that a good one was much more expensive than a guitar. He didn’t like the sound or the looks of the mandolins he could afford, so he decided to build his own. In 2008, his wife gave him a book on constructing a mandolin, “The Ultimate Mandolin Construction Manual” by Roger H. Siminoff, and, he said, “I must’ve read it 50 times over the next year.”
When he retired in 2009, Callis spent three months making all of the tools he needed to build a mandolin, then he began working on his first one. Once he was finished, though, he wasn’t satisfied with what he’d done.
“The sound was as good as what I was used to buying,” he said, “but I thought I could do better. So as soon as I finished that one, I made another one, and I’ve been improving and learning ever since.”
Building mandolins is not easy, said Callis. Some mandolin makers work in a repair shop or apprentice with someone else to learn the craft. Since there are no mandolin makers anywhere near Mathews, Callis relied on the book his wife gave him and the occasional YouTube video a builder might produce.
“I pick up a little as I go along,” he said.
The construction process is long and involved, said Callis. The top piece of the instrument typically starts out as a piece of wood ¾ of an inch thick (Adirondack red spruce is the preferred wood) that has to be carved out like a shallow bowl on the inside, with the thickness ranging from a sixteenth to a quarter inch. Every piece of wood has a tune, he said, and each piece has to be carved differently to get the right tone and sound out of it. The thinner the wood gets, the lower the note the wood produces, he said. This process is in contrast to mass-produced mandolins in which the wood is the same thickness all the way across, he said.
The F holes in the mandolin (named for their shape) also help create the instrument’s sound, said Callis. When they’re first carved into the top, they’re small, and then they’re enlarged “until you get the note you want.”
The sides and back of a mandolin are often made of sugar maple or red maple, said Callis, because the wood from those trees forms a curled pattern that makes for an attractive instrument.
“The more the wood is rippled, the better the players like it,” he said.
To stain the instrument, Callis uses leather dyes because they’re easier to work with to get the desired effect. The finish coat is made of up to 20 coats of water-based lacquer, creating a blinding shine whenever light hits its surface. For a finishing touch, Callis uses mother-of-pearl and abalone shell to inlay decorative touches into the instrument.
It takes about three months to build one mandolin working four or five hours a day except when the instrument is drying or curing, said Callis. He said he figures he could make five of them in that amount of time if he staggered their production.
Callis said that some mandolin makers work to make every single instrument sound exactly the same because that’s what Lloyd Loar did as a highly successful designer for the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Company in the early 1900s. But Callis said he likes changing up the sound.
“I’m not building Lloyd Loar’s instruments,” he said. “I’m building mine.”
Callis said he showed the second mandolin he ever made to Jim Winter, the owner of Winter Sound, “and he was pleased,” so Callis began putting the instruments he made in the store, to be sold on consignment. That was in 2009, and Callis has made 27 mandolins since then, selling 20 of them.
“I just wanted to sell one so I could make another one,” he said.
But over the last couple of years, he said, he realized he was at a point where he could make some money on the instruments. Although mass-produced mandolins from Asian countries can be purchased for less than $500, he said the least expensive handmade F-style mandolin he’s run across sold for $2,600.
Not long ago, a woman from Florida bought one of Callis’s mandolins while visiting Gloucester. A mandolin maker herself, she wanted to try to build the F-style mandolin that Callis focuses on. When she was finished, she advertised online to sell Callis’s mandolin, and it drew the interest of a buyer in Vermont. That buyer tracked down Callis and bought one of his instruments. The incident convinced Callis that he needed an online presence to reach the market he needs to sell to, and he now has his own website.
To see some of Callis’ instruments, visit www.rcinstruments.com or search on Facebook for R.C. Mandolins.