Making instruments a passion for retired South County man

It’s a gift he has, Elvin Weaver, to take a piece of wood and form it into a chair, guitar or hunting bow.

“A lot of it was out of necessity,” Weaver said. “We needed furniture, so instead of buying furniture with what little money we had, I bought the tools to make it. Then we had the furniture and I still had the tools.”

Weaver spoke fondly of those days more than 50 years ago, when at 18 and fresh out of school, he married his sweetheart Pat and went to work painting diesel trucks for International Harvester in Emeryville.

It was there he learned the importance of detail.

Of all the creations that appear today at Weaver’s fingertips, guitars may be his favorite due to his long history with the instrument. A guitar was one of the first things he knew he really wanted.

At 14, Weaver and two buddies cut asparagus one summer down near Waveland, Ark., to repay their parents for letting them buy Montgomery Wards guitars on credit.

At the end of day, “I threw my knife over to the boss’s feet and said, ‘I’ll never do this again’,” Weaver recalled, shaking his head at the memory of the hot, backbreaking work.

The boys had planned to pay back the $35, then borrow $5 to go to town that night. But Weaver’s father had a different idea.

“If you play in church, I’ll pay for your guitar,” the elder Weaver offered.

“What tune do you want to hear?” asked the younger.

Today, Weaver’s handcrafted guitars are nothing like his first one. Made of finely planed rose wood and spruce, each is expertly cut, bent, glued, clamped, sanded and finished.

“I just always had in my mind how you could make something like that,” he said.

But it was a long time between knowing and doing, and it took a trip to the C.F. Martin & Company guitar factory in Nazareth, Pa. to stir up his creative gift.

Weaver built his first guitar in 1997. Since then, he’s built more than 50 and repaired countless others. His current project is a busted up 1923, 0-18 Martin. It will be a total remake for the mahogany box that lies now in splintered-edge pieces. But the end block with the guitar’s serial number inscribed, and the original neck and fret board will be added to make it a unique hybrid Martin-Weaver.

“I’ve given away a third or more,” Weaver said of his musical handiwork. And on each one, he inscribes a Bible verse on the underside of the face in reverse writing. With a long-handled dental mirror, one can read the hidden words.

He held up a finely crafted piece, polished to a shine, the box as smooth as satin.

“This is the way Martin made them before [World War II],” he said, stroking the Brazilian rose wood sides and ridge spruce top with abalone inlay. He pointed out an old Roy Rogers poster, the Western singer playing an OM-45 Martin guitar that looked like the one in Weaver’s hands.

Legend has it that Rogers bought it in a pawn shop in 1925, Weaver said, one of only 14 that Martin had made at the time.

“I’ve studied Martin all my life,” he said, holding his remarkable replica.

The only apparent difference was the “Weaver” inscribed at the top of the headstock and less inlay that would classify Weaver’s as an OM-42.

For 35 years Weaver ran his own auto paint shop after hours during his regular job as a painter for Porterville Unified Schools. Two jobs were the norm, he said, and while he painted for the schools during the day, his wife Pat helped promote their business by dismantling and preparing vehicles for the evening’s work.

“I’d have them ready for him, and he’d come home and paint,” she said.

Weaver’s old paint booth now makes up one end of his woodworking shop, complete with clamps, table saws, jointers, a sanding machine, cabinets he built himself, jigs (forms for shaping) and piles of rejected projects.

A dulcimer, mandolin and banjo cover one table.

“This is what I first started making,” he said, cradling the smooth-skinned, honey-colored dulcimer. “They made some of the most beautiful music I ever heard. That and the Indian flute.”

For every American Indian love flute he successfully completes, he throws 10 away, he said. Only perfection brings out the singularly, mournful song of the flute, many of which he fashions of curly maple and poplar, “bought right out here at Home Depot.”

Some who know of Weaver’s skill have tried to turn his craftsmanship into a business, but the retiree resists it.

“I don’t want to run it into a job,” he said. “I want to play with it.”

Others play with it, too, including a 14-year-old boy from Weaver’s church.

Weaver said he saw the boy struggling with the tuning keys on a guitar one Sunday morning, complaining that it wouldn’t stay in tune.

“‘There’s an old man in this church who knows a lot about guitars,’ I told him. ‘You ought to talk to him.’”

A few weeks later, Weaver handed the boy a one-of-kind gift.

“He made him the most beautiful guitar and he gave it to Bradley as a gift,” said Bradley’s mother, Elizabeth Weaver (no relation). “This one was special for Elvin as well as Bradley,” who had several electric guitars, but not a good acoustic, she said.

“When he looked at it he was completely speechless.”

So was the rest of the family, who knew the value of one of Weaver’s custom-built guitars.

“I didn’t say anything about paying,” Weaver recalled telling them.

Of course he didn’t. And it probably had something to do with another 14-year-old in an asparagus patch down near Waveland, Ark.

“You’re playing for church,” he told Bradley.

What tune would you like to hear?

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