​When I was a teenager, and believe me, that was a long time ago, all kids were dancing at the sounds of Saturday Night Fever while I was listening to Robert Johnson and Barbecue Bob. I collected old records, lived completely in another world than my schoolmates and it turned out to be not just a childhood phase. Later on in life, I organized many blues festivals, produced a radio show for over 10 years and wrote for a blues magazine in the Netherlands. You could say it's the only thing in life that kept a constant interest. At first, you believe the romantic stories about the string up a post of the porch being used as a bass, the washboard rhythm and yes, also the cigar box guitar. In fact, it's not romantic at all, is it? It's all about dark and hard times, about being poor and looking for solutions to overcome the lack of money. People made instruments with the items that were available for free, cigar boxes, washboards, tin cans, buckets and so on. The lucky ones bought a proper instrument the minute they could afford it. Which brings me to the way I build my instruments, finally... 

No, I can't compare myself with others, not with the ones that made instruments out of poverty, not with the luthiers in history that made beautiful works of art without the modern tools we have nowadays. I am this lucky guy with a 300-year-old workshop (which I rebuild from a ruin, but that's another story), living in a time where people throw so much good stuff away that it isn't hard to find the materials to build whatever you like to, I didn't find a cigar box yet though. A box is a box though and I like to recycle them into stringed instruments, that's why I call them RBG's (recycled box guitars). Any box will do if it's not too small or too big. It's just that people throw away so many things that are usable in the process of making an instrument. At the moment there are 2 washing dryers, 2 dishwashers, a satellite dish and an old street light underneath the carport next to the workshop. The shop is nicely filled with all kinds of wood, donated by a local builder who saves up all usable pieces when he restores houses and calls me once a year to collect. I do make furniture, lamps and other items, rebuild or restore old Portuguese furniture (for a living), but I don't do new doors, windows or other structural builds and therefore I am no competition, that's why the builder doesn't mind giving me the wood. 

My goal is to buy as few things as possible. Not in a "purist" way, I will use old guitar parts (or new ones if I find them on a flea market or car boot sale) if they are available, but when not, then it's a nice challenge to make parts. I mostly make my own tuners an frets.