Ralphie: Firstly. Nobody wants to put in the decades (and I mean decades) of work needed to learn all the necessary skills needed to do it.

This seems to be the case with many artisan trades or professions. The firm I use locally for plaster-work as I'm renovating my (modest, semi-detached, late Victorian) house does wonderful work. Their craftsmen can "throw up" sections of ornate new coving/cornicing in-situ to blend un-noticeably with the existing Victorian stuff. They work on the ornate plaster ceilings of local stately homes etc, and are not cheap. They'd LOVE to spread the knowledge of their techniques, as the youngest person in the firm is the owner's son, at 40. The rest are in their late 50s and 60s. They regularly take on young apprentices. These people NEVER stay beyond the point where they've learned to plaster a nice flat wall. They leave and set up as jobbing plasterers working on simple basic plastering of flat walls in new housing developments or renovations. As the owner's son says: "Can't blame them,there's no point in them spending another 5 years learning all the ornate stuff, because they can earn far more, on an hourly basis, throwing up flat walls than they'll earn doing a complicated job that requires special skills, and artistry. They're interested in income, not artistry".

I can vouch that Will's friend does wonderful work, with limited resources, in a tiny workshop. I also know that the other local luthiers he mentions help and advise each other, and even suggest other makers who may be able to deliver a "bespoke" instrument earlier or more cheaply than they could. But I reckon Will's mate could earn far more being the "guitar tech" at our local music shop where the "bread and butter" seems to be changing strings for people who can't be bothered to do it themselves and are willing to pay someone else to do it.

As someone else said, re-visiting this thread is a bit like feeling compelled to return to the scene of a car-crash. Conrad's got certain ideas "hard-wired" into his head that bear no relation to reality, and nothing anyone can say will sway him from his dogmatic and ill-thought-out positions.

But it's still entertaining reading the posts of Don and several others :-)