What’s in a name? My father was a log scaler and grader and I spent my early teen years living in a logging camp in Southeast Alaska. My mom’s dad taught me how to use hand tools when I was younger and he lived his retirement years in part as a woodworker. 

In my 20s, I worked at a hardwoods mill that processed alder, some maple and occasionally birch. I was a grader on the green end of things, and pulled dried lumber on the planer chain.  One day we were doing a run of maple. I asked my supervisor if I could pull the cart for figured grades so I could pick out some for myself. I pulled a few of the best boards over the course of the day. That was in the mid 1990s – a few short years after I started playing guitar. 

Those beautiful boards followed me around to college – stored under my bed – then through early married life and then, after four kids grew enough that I had some free time, I built my first guitar and have made them my projects here in the Pacific Northwest during the darker and wetter winter months when it’s harder to enjoy being outside.

The name Lumbersen is a mash up of my last name – Hansen – and Lumber – not because the guitars are made from lumber (though they obviously are), but because there was a thread of lumber culture woven through my history that I wanted to honor. I’ve since learned that somewhat distant relatives on my great grandmother’s side of the family own Vaagen Timbers–yet another strand of connection to trees, logs, lumber and woodcraft.