Greg's Story: From Musician to Maker of Instruments

⏱ Time to Complete: Almost 3 years, 2 mandolins, and counting

🔧 Tools Used: ShopBot CNC Router, Hand Tools, Woodshop

💡 Key Learning: The best projects are the ones that scare you a little

🎯 Skill Level: Light woodworking experience, skilled musician, zero instrument building experience

📍 Location: Norfolk

The Beginning

Greg was already a musician. He played, he performed, and he knew better than most people what a great instrument felt like in his hands.

But he had never built one.

He joined 757 Makerspace with some light woodworking skills and an idea that honestly most people would have talked themselves out of. He wanted to build a mandolin from scratch. Not buy a kit. Not modify something existing. Build one from raw material, by hand, from start to finish.

So he got to work.

The Build

A mandolin is not a forgiving first instrument build. The geometry is precise, the tolerances are tight, and the difference between something that actually plays beautifully and something that just looks nice on a shelf comes down to fractions of a millimeter.

Greg used the ShopBot CNC router to cut the complex curves and components that would have taken weeks to produce by hand. But the CNC was just the starting point. What came after was months of hand finishing, sanding, shaping, and careful assembly. Learning how the wood behaved. Understanding how everything needed to come together to actually produce the sound he was hearing in his head.

He also set up his own studio here at 757 Makerspace during that time, deepening his commitment to the craft and giving himself the space to really dig in.

Then came the inlay work on the headstock. Tiny, precise, painstaking work that most people would have skipped or simplified. Greg didn't skip it. When he finished it he was beaming. He couldn't stop looking at it and sharing the process with others.

He built his first mandolin. Then he brought his fiancee in to show her what he had been working on. Watching him show her, watching him explain every joint and every decision and every hour that went into it, you understood exactly what this project meant to him.

He built a second one. Each one better than the last.

The Outcome

After almost three years at 757 Makerspace Greg moved away from Hampton Roads. He took everything he learned here with him.

He never stopped building.

Here's what made it possible:

• Access to a ShopBot CNC router. The complex curves that define a mandolin's shape are not something you achieve with basic hand tools alone. Having access to the right equipment made the whole project possible.

• Time to learn at his own pace. Greg spent almost three years here. He didn't rush any of it. He learned each part of the process before moving on to the next one.

• A community around him. When you're building something most people around you have never attempted, being in a space full of people who understand the process of figuring hard things out matters more than you'd expect.

• The skills went with him. Greg left and kept going. That's the real measure of what happened here.

He came in as a musician. He left as a luthier. Today Greg runs Pauza Mandolins, continuing to grow his craft and produce instruments that got their start in a makerspace in Norfolk, Virginia. Give him a follow.

Ready to build something that scares you a little?

If you have an idea that feels too ambitious, too technical, or too hard to figure out on your own, let's talk.

👉 Schedule Your Free Tour — we'll show you the space, walk you through what's available, and have an honest conversation about whether we're the right fit for what you have in mind.