THIS IS A MEMORIAL FOR MY FRIEND & MENTOR JOHN KIRTLAND. All words in light blue are taken directly from the website he built at www.unclejohnnyswoodshop.com and are his, as typed. I have mixed in pictures of his work; this is for display purposes only. It'll be UNDER CONSTRUCTION for a while as I gather & add more images. I can be contacted through the Birdsong Guitars main pages. 

~Scott, humble ripple of Unclej


John Kirtland... son, brother, father to some... friend, mentor, guru to others... and everybody's favorite uncle!

Come on in and kick your shoes off.  Make yourself comfortable and enjoy your visit.  Who knows?  You might just find something that you like.

After selling my handcrafted wood pieces for many years here in my home town and at the urging of some friends I decided to build this site.  On the following pages you'll find a wide variety of products for sale: custom hand made guitars, unique wooden jewelry including wood feather earrings and wood pendants, guitar pick jewelry including those made with Harley-Davidson and Jack Daniels guitar picks, wood jewelry boxes, wood keepsake boxes, natural wood incense boxes and incense burners, ornate potpourri bowls, and my favorite, miniature oil lamps.

You'll also find my wood sculptures available here.  These sculptures, as well as most of my other offerings are made almost exclusively of "found wood" in combination with other materials such as stone and metal.

I built my woodshop in 1995 in the middle of five acres of beautiful Texas Hill Country a few miles outside of the little village of Wimberley.  The only clearing that I did was for a driveway and an area for the shop and storage building .  The rest is heavily wooded with some huge oaks, a couple of nice old elms and plenty of the ever-present cedar that grows like a weed around here.  It's not unusual to look out one of the windows and see white tailed deer passing by or browsing on the lower branches of a couple of peach trees that I planted a few years ago.

My home is about a mile from my shop so when I go there it's a complete getaway.  No phone.  No television.  Just creative energy and enough power tools to make just about anything I get interested in making.  Have I mentioned yet that I love power tools?  Well, I do...'cause I'm a manly sort of man and manly men like power tools...and I am...so I do.

As I mentioned before the majority of my pieces, not just the wood sculptures, are made from "found" wood...downed trees or wood that has fallen from a tree and spent years in the Texas weather or in the nearby Blanco River and has been worn and colored and textured in a way that I couldn’t hope to copy.  Mother  Nature has done a lot of the work for me on these pieces.  All I have to do is decide what to make with them and then to shape and smooth and finish them.  Even after all the years that I've owned this little bit of land I can still walk around it and find pieces of wood to use that I've never seen before.

 The river I mentioned is a constant source as well.  It's like an ever changing super market.  A couple of inches of rain and the river delivers new wood along its banks for me to work with.  Friends and neighbors will occasionally bring me interesting pieces and from time to time they'll let me search their property for useable material.

I've always wondered what it would be like to be the kind of person who becomes interested in just one thing and then gets really, really good at that one thing.  I admire people like that but my old brain just doesn't seem to work that way and nothing reflects that more than my woodworking.  I imagine that if all I did was build custom guitars I might make a decent living at it but then I'd never be able to enjoy sculpting or jewelry making or creating any of the other things that I love to create.  I'll always offer hand made guitars, oil lamps, wood jewelry, wood sculptures and wood boxes of all sorts because they're fun to make and they're my biggest sellers but if you'll drop in from time to time you may find all sorts of new things for sale.

In addition to my wood working I have a little guitar shop here in Wimberley where I sell and repair guitars and tube amps and teach a variety of stringed instruments.

I'm a member of the Wimberley Valley Art League and I currently have my sculptures on display at the Art And Soul gallery and a wide variety of other wood art at a great shop called Rancho Deluxe.   I strive to make each of my pieces a unique reflection of the Texas Hill Country’s incredible beauty and abundance and sincerely hope that you'll enjoy them.


(Click here to see more at the Uncle Johnny jewelry page)



These fun little earrings are created with regular guitar picks and the ball end beads from guitar strings.  If there's a particular pick that you'd like to use let me know and I'll see if they're available through my normal distributors.  If you'd like a necklace to go along with the earrings I can do that.  If you've got a band these would make great giveaways at your gigs and I can make as many as you like.  If you have personalized picks I can make them from those.

Each of these feather pieces is completely hand crafted and all of the materials used are 100% natural.  No plastic beads on these puppies.  The woods used will vary from time to time depending on what I have available but on the outside chance that you'd like to order ten or fifteen pairs of earrings so that your singing mime troupe can all look alike I'd be happy to try to accommodate you.

(Click here to see more at the Uncle Johnny feather page)

These band saw boxes are generally crafted from tree branches or sections of stumps.  The Mesquite boxes are actually made from some old fence posts that came from South Texas.  Most have a Satin or Felt lining on the bottom.  The incense boxes are unlined so that they can absorb the fragrance of your incense.

(Click here to see more at the Uncle Johnny box page)


The history of the oil lamp can be traced back as far as 1500 BC.  The Phoenicians, the Greeks and Romans and even the early Americans all depended on oil lamps for light.  Today oil lamps aren't a necessity but the charm and the warmth of their gentle glow still remains.  Light a couple and create a romantic mood.  Use one to facilitate meditation.  Add some scented oil and fill a room with a relaxing aroma.



These miniature oil lamps come complete with a wick, a small bottle of oil and a funnel for easy filling.  The majority are made with found wood and left in a mostly natural state.  My favorites have always been the ones made of cedar but you can see that almost any kind of wood makes a beautiful piece.  During all of the years that I've been marketing my woodwork these have been by far my most popular items.

(Click here to see more at the Uncle Johnny oil lamp page)

It doesn't matter whether you're a front porch picker, an occasional gigger or a professional touring musician there's nothing quite like playing a guitar that was made to your personal specifications.  Imagine owning a guitar with your favorite Strat neck, the pickups from your Tele or Les Paul with an artistic theme of your choosing.  Or let's say you've been looking for a sound that you just can't get off of the rack.  You've spent a small fortune changing the pickups on your favorite axe and that illusive sound is still not there.  A custom, handcrafted guitar might be just what you're looking for.

While I have built guitars just to sell in my shop the ones that I really enjoy making are those for customers who come to me looking for something special.  I really enjoy finding out what feel and look and sound they're trying to achieve and then making it for them.  At the risk of sounding way too touchy-feely I can't think of anything that I do that's more satisfying than creating something that I know is going to be used to make music.  When a customer first test drives one of my instruments I still get a feeling of awe that those sounds are coming out of something that I created.  The very first guitar that I ever made, that "Mesquite Gumby" looking thing wearing the Concho hat, is still being used by a professional musician and I still get that sense of awe every time I hear it.

Now..if you're looking for a flamed maple top with a high gloss lacquer finished or a copy of any of the hundreds of fine instruments that you can buy in any guitar warehouse I'm not going to be your guy.  I use a hand rubbed oil finish on almost all of my guitars.  It lets the natural look and feel and tone of the wood come through.

If you'd like to explore the possibilities of a personalized, hand crafted guitar just email me with your contact information and I'll call you so we can discuss it.  All of my guitars come with a hard case and free shipping.  Well, it's not really free but I pay for it so it's free to you.

(Click here to see more at the Uncle Johnny guitar page)

If you see something marked AVAILABLE click on it and it will take you to a complete description and more pics and if the spirit moves well then you just go ahead and buy it and we'll both be happy.  If you'd like to discuss a custom build or have any questions about any of the available guitars drop me a line and we'll get together by phone.. 

Thank you for shopping at Uncle Johnny's Woodshop

Eulogy page
Random pics page - UPDATED AUG '07

From his links page...

This is what guitar building is supposed to be: total dedication to the creation of a beautiful instrument designed to meet the individual needs of each of their customers.

Check 'em out.