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<\/a>At the time, Jewitt didn\u2019t see himself making a steady income from lutherie. So then, in 1988, he began refinishing furniture, a trade he learned from his father, who would refurbish antique pieces on weekends. He remained in that field until the early 1990s, when he had the crazy idea that he could make colorants for the music industry. It wasn\u2019t long before he realized that he needed a deeper understanding of chemistry to make it in the business, so he bought some video courses in organic chemistry on VHS tapes and taught himself the subject. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jewitt then set out to not only produce colorants but to invent a product that would remedy a perennial industry dilemma. At the time, a finisher needed one type of product for staining bare wood, another for making the spray color for a sunburst, and yet another for other tasks like touchups and coloring grain filler. Jewitt says, \u201cI thought, \u2018Maybe I can just make a one-size-fits-all solution!\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a bit of trial and error, Jewitt eventually arrived at a successful formula, and in 1995 brought the finished product, TransTint, to Stewart-MacDonald, the luthier supplier, who bought the idea immediately. Today, Jewitt\u2019s concentrated dye-based colorant (sold as ColorTone under StewMac<\/a>) is used by Gibson, Martin, Taylor, Collings, Breedlove, and Santa Cruz, among other major guitar companies, as well as hundreds and hundreds of small boutique makers. Homestead Finishing Products<\/a> sells everything from finishes to polishes and waxes to HVLP (High Volume Low Pressure) spray equipment to stains and colorants, marketing both homemade products as well as distributing those made by other brands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jewitt is currently phasing out the majority of his products to focus exclusively on colorants. Having less variety in his inventory means less time filling small orders, and more time for building guitars. In the meantime, the TransTint\/ColorTone product line has left an indelible mark on the industry. \u201cSherwin-Williams has told me that my yellow is different from anybody else\u2019s on the market, and that\u2019s the reason that they buy from me,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve been told that if I ever discontinue my red, I\u2019ll have death threats from just about everybody that does Gibson repair work. It\u2019s just a dead ringer for some of the old Gibson colors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jewitt\u2019s clients run the gamut\u2014alongside those in instrument making (which also include Steinway & Sons, the piano company), he supplies manufacturers in furniture and flooring, as well as the film, aerospace, and automotive industries. His products have been used on the sets of the Twilight Saga <\/em>series, The Green Mile<\/em>, and other movies, and to decorate the interior of Sikorsky helicopters. In addition to his main business, he\u2019s authored six books and six online courses on finishing and guitar making\u2014enthusiastically endorsing the same self-taught method that led him to accomplish what he had so long believed to be impossible. He never envisioned achieving so much, but repeatedly brings everything back to his main philosophy that has helped him every step of the way: \u201cIf you can build a guitar, you can do anything,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Jewitt, his successful colorant business has reached its apex. Now, he says, \u201cI want to just focus on the musical instrument business and maybe a few other things to pay the bills.\u201d Fortunately, that success has enabled him to pursue his dream of making guitars, a part of the business he established around 2012, after having built on the side over the years. While he still makes all of his colorants by hand, he\u2019s hired someone to fill all the orders, which allows him more time to build guitars during the week\u2014something he balances with spending time problem-solving colorant issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Going back and forth between the Homestead Finishing and guitar shop areas of his 8,000-square-foot Cleveland facility can lead to some humorous scenarios\u2014in which that self-taught organic chemistry education comes in handy. Jewitt says, \u201cIt can be a problem in that the raw materials that I use are very powdery. Sometimes I\u2019ll get a bunch of dye powder stuck in my hair when I\u2019m over there, and then I\u2019ll go to wet down a soundboard and all of a sudden, I see little spots of turquoise and red and purple. But fortunately, I know how to get rid of them.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jewitt\u2019s average output is six to eight guitars a year, most of them smaller sizes like 00s and 000s. He is currently working on a few commissions. One is for former Major League Baseball player Derek Dietrich, who requested that the guitar match the color of his signature bat. Upon inspecting the bat, Jewitt saw that it was manufactured by Victus Sports\u2014a company that just so happens to be a Homestead Finishing customer. \u201cThat made life easy,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I love commission builds. That\u2019s my favorite part\u2014making somebody\u2019s dream realized.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His goal is to build guitars that sound as good as they look, and when it comes to gauging the quality of the materials and the product while it\u2019s in the process of being built, Jewitt steers clear of modern technology such as frequency spectrum analyzers to measure a guitar\u2019s tone. \u201cI\u2019m still more of the intuitive, old-school type of builder in that I\u2019m just tapping the wood all the time as I\u2019m building,\u201d he says, laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of the day, Jewitt admits the quality of the product can depend on luck of the draw. He has carefully built instruments using the finest tonewoods\u2014like sinker mahogany or Honduran rosewood and Italian spruce, assembled with hot hide glue\u2014and been underwhelmed by the finished results. On the other hand, he\u2019s experienced many of those special and unpredictable moments in lutherie when a finished guitar sounds brilliant, unlike any other. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018Wow, how did that happen?\u2019 You never know, quite frankly,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite having made it as the guitar industry\u2019s leading colorant supplier and achieving his dream of becoming a luthier, Jewitt says that his favorite parts of the job are the endless creative avenues and the rewards of navigating them. \u201cWhat I love about building acoustic guitars is that there\u2019s always something different to do,\u201d he says. \u201cYou go on social media or whatever and you see something that somebody else has done and you go, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s really cool, I want to incorporate that.\u2019 You\u2019re always upping your own game, and I just love that.\u201d jewittguitars.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nA Self-Made Maker<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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