Where most of us just see a tree, Karl Venz sees a potential guitar.
"I love timber and I especially love seeing a tree and wondering what sort of grain, what sort of colour, what sort of timber it is," Mr Venz said.
"So I decided to get involved making guitars, building them out of local timbers."
ABC Landline: Colin Hertzog
)The 76-year-old lives in Queensland's picturesque Mary Valley, where he crafts guitars from start to finish using local timber.
Each instrument he makes tells a special story.
"I've been making guitars now for about eight years," he said.
"It got started with my son Phillip. He and his mates all play guitars, and they decided one year that they were going to build themselves a guitar and asked me if I wanted to be in on this project.
"I was quite excited to get involved and I haven't looked back since.
Friends now call Mr Venz when they have trees or timber that they think may be useful to him.
ABC Landline: Colin Hertzog
)One instrument is made up of many types of timber.
"This particular guitar is made from hoop pine, the back sides and soundboard is all hoop pine and a dark Queensland rosewood fretboard, and of course we use cattle bone for the saddle, the nut, and that's camphor laurel veneer on the headstock," he said.
A labour of love
Mr Venz often goes to great lengths to get the trees or timber to his home to be processed.
"The battle of getting logs home is a major thing," he said.
"I don't have the infrastructure to do that, so I bring them home in 2.4-metre lengths on my trailer behind the car — sometimes a lot more than I should.
"I bought a little second-hand sawmill many years ago, and it's just been fabulous. It's a dinosaur by name and nature."
ABC Landline: Courtney Wilson
)Taking a tree and turning it into an instrument is a lesson in patience, but the end product is a piece of art.
Mr Venz dries the sawn timber for around a year before he can work with it.
He said different timbers produced vastly different acoustics.
"I've made them out of things like red cedar, camphor laurel, bunya pine, hoop pine, jacaranda, blue gum, messmate, Queensland maple, just to name a few," he said.
ABC Landline: Courtney Wilson
)"You can get two guitars out of the same timber and they'll look exactly the same, and they just won't be the same.
"You never know until you play it if you've got a good one, and then you just hope you can duplicate it somewhere down the track."
Chasing 'the secret sound'
Musician Kylie Cowling came across Karl Venz at the local Mary Valley Harvest markets, and had the chance to trial one of his handmade instruments.
"With a lot of guitars I think that they're brought in from overseas and they're made in a factory," Ms Cowling said.
ABC Landline: Courtney Wilson
)"The difference between a guitar that's made like that and something that's handmade, with the acoustic guitars, it's a world of difference — [the] audio difference is phenomenal.
"I suppose that's what caught me about Karl's guitars. He has an intuition about what woods to put together and although he's not a player, he's very thoughtful about the tones."
Mr Venz sells his guitars for from $400 to $7,000, although he admits there are some simply too special to part with.
"The first one I ever made, I won't sell that," he said.
"There's a couple of other ones that are unique that I won't sell, but mostly I make them and hope that people want to buy them."
ABC Landline: Courtney Wilson
)Like all craftsmen, he is content to keep tinkering in the hope of one day accomplishing that elusive, perfect piece.
"I've succeeded to some degree."
Watch this story on ABC TV's Landline this Sunday at 12:30pm or on iview.
Queensland craftsman spends his retirement making guitars from local timber - ABC News
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