Portfolios
Miscellany
Daniel Joseph Betsill, luthier, et al
Artist's Profile, UGA Website 2008
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Working on a 19th century-styled tenor banjo for my Victorian costume for DragonCon. Not many hours left! See my banjo page for more images.
++++++
Monday, August 30, 2010
Working on an Edwardian-inspired TV stand in ash. If the Edwardians had TVs, they would sit on something like this.
Turning the face pilasters
++++++
Saturday, July 31, 2010
An Eastlake-styled bookcase for Shannon in ebonized ash.
++++++
.jpg)
A new pair of stools made from the dogwood tree that came down in our yard a few weeks ago. See the furniture page for project details.
++++++
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The tie stand is complete. I hated to paint over that figured maple, but this piece incorporates a previous bowtie stand I made a number of years ago which was painted black.
++++++
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Slowly I turn. . .
. . .very slowly. 520 rmp to be exact. The length of this piece (about 40") means deflection is a big problem. This is going to be a floor-standing necktie stand.
Tee Hee. More adventures in kiddie guitars. I got this from World Market for $20. It's billed as a 'child's guitar' but it was completely unplayable in its purchased state: action WAY too high and friction tuning machines so slack that holding any kind of pitch is impossible, combined with poor string gauging (only about 0.015" differential between highest and lowest string). But I saw a mini Spanish renaissance guitar - or some kind of modern descendant like a Quinta - in the making. A little professional lutherie inflicted and one trip-to-the-craft-shop later and we have a 4-course freakshow. I have it tuned in tenor banjo intervals in an open-A tuning. Check out the off-the-shelf scrapbooking sticker that's almost identical to a standard baroque guitar mustache bridge! Synchronicity!
Next to charango for scale.
World Market photo of original condition
++++++
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
A couple of sexy shots of the cedar box I just completed. This is for a client who's building his home of the material. The box was made out of an 18" cuttoff of a 6x12 beam
++++++
Friday, May 7, 2010
The betsill workshop: your bachi-making headquarters! This is the plectrum for a Chikuzen biwa. It's the third commission in as many years I have had for one of these implements. Mahogany for the body, boxwood for the blade. When I think of all the bachi-less biwas out there it breaks my heart. See the biwa page for more bachis.
++++++
Friday, April 2, 2010
Occasionally I get furniture commissions (FF&E as we say in the biz). These frames were made for an IT training company on a budget. They didn't really have an art budget so this conference room and training room were spiced up with large framed Maharam wallpaper panels. Idea/space design courtesy of Insight Design Inc.
++++++
Monday, February 1, 2010
About 15 years ago I made a mailbox with elaborate turned finials for my grandmother. It had a good long life before someone ran into it this past Christmas. See my furniture page for details of the replacement. Also in this picture is a spalted magnolia bowl recently completed
++++++
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Here's a sexy shot of the latest tenor cittern.
++++++
Saturday, December 19, 2009
It plays! The Estey Organ is fully functional. See dedicated page for project details.
++++++
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Work resumes on the Symphony. No, not that kind of symphony. See also "Organistrum"
++++++
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
It's Eric the Half-a-Bridge!
++++++
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The tenor has its fingerboard nearly complete. The scrolls are dry fitted with doublestick tape. Peg blanks wait in the near distance. A piece of veneer taped in place protects the rosette.
++++++
Thursday, November 5, 2009
At long last the stand for the Stockhausen slit drums is made. The complete project details are here .
++++++
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Visit the new Pipemaking page for today's distraction from lutherie.
++++++
Monday, September 14, 2009
The latest DaSalo has top attached and pegs turned and is awaiting fretting. The tenor is in progress of fretting (the fingerboards are unattached)
++++++
Workshop in a closet.
++++++
Online Chap Book:
And
did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
-William Blake
And there the sunset skies unseal’d, Like lands he never knew, /Beyond to-morrow’s battle-field /Lay open out of view /To ride into.
-D.G. Rossetti, from The Staff and Script
Let Athene dwell in the cities she's founded. For me, the woodlands.
-Virgil
He slept thus until late morning, while the pillows arranged themselves into a large flat plain on which his now quieter sleep would wander. On these white roads, he slowly returned to his senses, to daylight, to reality - and at last he opened his eyes as does a sleeping passenger when the train stops at a station.
-Bruno Schultz, from The Cinnamon Shops
Deus Mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
-Rudolph Otto
Are you angry with him whose armpits stink? Are you angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good does this anger do you? He has such a mouth, he has such armpits: it is necessary that such an emination must come from such things. But the man has reason, it will be said, and he is able, if he takes pains, to discover wherein he offends. . .there is no need of anger, the stuff of tragic actors and whores.
-Marcus Aurelius
Green aisles of Pullman cars/ Soothe me like trees/ Woven in old tapestries/ I love to watch the stars/ Remote above the earth/ In watery light,/ while in the lower berth./ I whirl through the night.
-William Rose Benet
With faith, discipline and selfless devotion to duty, there is nothing worthwhile that you cannot achieve.
-Jinnah
The
full streams feed on flower of rushes, /Ripe grasses trammel a traveling
foot, /The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes/
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;/And fruit and leaf are as gold
and fire,/And the oat is heard above the lyre, /And the hoofèd
heel of a satyr crushes /The chestnut husk at the chestnut root.
-Swinburne
Both music and dance are voices of the way.
-Zenji Hakuin
For the dulcimer rhimes are grace place and the like.
-Christopher Smart