1954–2007

December 11, 2007 12:14 PM

Building a mandolin from start to finish. A beautiful documentary in three parts on the work of the late great Portland luthier John Sullivan.
posted by OverlappingElvis (9 comments total)

I knew John personally, and play a violin built by him. He did beautiful work, and I think this documentary is the best tribute you could give him.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 12:19 PM on December 11, 2007

That was a good little video (although strangely split up for posting). I wish it had shown even more.

I liked the pencil gauge for testing thickness.

What was the small router type thing he used to make the recesses for the outline inlays?
posted by OmieWise at 12:44 PM on December 11, 2007

Thanks for posting this! I wish this little documentary had been much longer.

That mandolin makes mine look like a pile of shit, too.
posted by interrobang at 1:15 PM on December 11, 2007

Wow! This is just great!

I just started my own headlong plunge into luthiery (building a dreadnought).
I know several players around Portland who play John Sullivan's guitars and mandolins.
They are things of beauty.

Sadly, I never really knew about the man or his work until he had already passed.
Seeing this on Mefi just made my week!
posted by dan g. at 1:23 PM on December 11, 2007

now is the time... to link to Kathy Matsushita's page.
posted by nicolin at 1:34 PM on December 11, 2007

Anyone happen to download copies of these? I clicked through to youtube just as whoever uploaded them started removing them, and caught the last two but missed the first one.

And holy crap, that's awesome.
posted by kjell at 3:27 PM on December 11, 2007

In case anyone cares, they can bypass youtube's website and get the 3rd segment here: http://ash-v240.ash.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=pc6tyeIJqDs

For how long I don't know. And I can't figure out the first two, pasting the video ID at the end doesn't go anywhere so they must be on other servers or something...
posted by kjell at 3:34 PM on December 11, 2007

Weird that someone would post them to youtube and then decide to remove them when they got a few eyeballs.

Oh, well. Guess I'll take my headphones off.
posted by maxwelton at 4:00 PM on December 11, 2007

Yeah that was disappointing. Watched the first two and then saw that he removed the video. Wtf.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 4:06 PM on December 11, 2007