Luthier is Homer's 'sultan of strings': driven by passion, Craig Stempniak makes and repairs guitars, and offers lessons, all from his home in Homer.

• Author: Bernard, Chris
• Position: Business Spotlight

In a town thriving with artists, Craig Stempniak stands out.

He works in a small workshop off the kitchen of the house out East End Road in Homer he shares with his wife, Joan, repairing guitars and other stringed instruments. He also builds them from scratch, a centuries-old art form called lutherie steeped in tradition and history.

Stempniak grew up in California, and has been playing guitar the better part of his life. He came to Alaska to fish in 1978, and spent 10 years crabbing in Kachemak Bay. Following that, Stempniak took to pounding nails on land until a power saw accident left him partially disabled.

His future, he thought at the time, was suddenly unclear. But it turned out to be a time of opportunity for Stempniak.

A BRIGHT START

With money from a federal rehabilitation program, he enrolled in a lutherie school in Minnesota. He saw a chance to better the prospects of his future while putting to use the skills he'd honed as a woodworker and as a musician.

It also was a chance to build an instrument to his own specifications a guitar player's dream, and something serious players will pay a king's ransom for.

Both his parents were musical. His dad played harmonica while his mother played guitar. Naturally, Stempniak turned to music. His parents gave him a Kay jumbo guitar--he still owns it, and is in the process of refinishing it--and in the early 1970s he joined his first band, an Idaho-based country rock band called "Four of a Kind."

As a hobby he bought and sold vintage guitars, solidifying his passion for the instruments. When, years later, he found himself at Red Wing Technical College's one-year intensive guitar making and repairing program, he was ready to apply that passion into the specialized art of lutherie.

Since then he's built guitars of different flavors, some that he's sold and some that he's kept for his own enjoyment. Of the dozen or so guitars found in his house at any given moment--not including the backlog of repairs or works in progress queued up in his shop--he's built most of them, and modified, or improved, the rest.

He's an accomplished guitar player, but in both of the bands he currently performs with, including the popular bar-and-function 1950s and 1960s rock 'n' roll band "Too Fat To Fly," he plays bass. He teaches both.

LESSONS FOR THE TAKING

In another room off his kitchen, Stempniak gives lessons to students of all ages. Waiting in his kitchen while he finishes with a student, you might hear...