Richard Paxton The Luthier of Bloomfield
A RT ICLE A N D PHOTOGR A PH Y B Y G E R RY F R A I B E R G
F
or Richard Paxton, epiphany came in a London bookstore in 1998. The Dundee, Scotland native - like any lad who has ever played a guitar - wanted a really nice guitar. The reality was he couldn’t afford the high price of a quality instrument like a Martin, so Richard decided to build one. When his Canadian wife Tanya spotted a book on guitar-making in the same bookstore, she handed it to him and he realized that was the moment his life changed. Now, some 25 guitars later, Richard Paxton lives in Bloomfield, Ontario with his wife and daughters Koa and Mallee. He is a bona fide luthier - a maker of fine, custom acoustic guitars. His guitars have a rich, silky polished finish and produce a sound to match their good looks. He makes guitar-making look easy, but only because Richard is a craftsman with exceptional woodworking skills, perfected at the famed Peter Freebody wooden boatyard on the River Thames. Freebody & Company is famous for building and restoring wooden boats built from teak, mahogany, and pine. Paxton did a City & Guilds in Boatbuilding and Design at Falmouth Marine College. He said, “You have to see the solid wood boats to comprehend the fine detail involved in building them.” In 1997, Richard decided to travel for a year and came to Canada, where he boarded a Vancouver-bound bus in Ottawa. At a stop in Whistler, he met Tanya who offered him a place to live, and they’ve been together since. They went back to Ottawa, Tanya’s hometown, then travelled the eastern seaboard and ended up in Mexico teaching English. They wanted to stay together, but Richard’s one-year visa stay in Canada was up, and he had to return to Britain, where Tanya joined him.
Richard studied boat building and got the job with Peter Freebody & Co. After four years in England, they decided to come back to Canada because the cost of living was lower, especially in rural Ontario. Richard and Tanya were married in Wakefield, Quebec in 2001 and settled in a small home on Main Street in Bloomfield, where Richard builds his guitars in a basement workshop. The house is over 100 years old and the basement walls are limestone. Richard is forever sweeping up “that which is not the guitar” from the cement floor - wood shavings and sawdust that didn’t get picked up by vacuum attachments to the various table saws, sanders, and buffers.
It takes about 100 hours to hand craft a Paxton guitar, and Richard says the first one took several months because he had to build the jigs and find the chisels and planes needed to carry out the task. He was a boat builder by day, and only had an hour or two in the evenings. He says it became an obsession, reading guitar-making books and researching the Internet to quench his thirst for knowledge. Richard’s guitars tend to be modelled after those of famous manufacturers, like the Martin Orchestra Model, introduced in 1929. It replaced banjos in an orchestra due to its volume, and was the biggest guitar in Martin’s lineup with a 14-fret neck. He favours padauk, an African hardwood for the back and sides. Richard notes, “It has a nice warm tone. Brazilian rosewood is the Holy Grail for COUNTY & QUINTE LIVING WINTER 2013
15