ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW HARTFORD, Iowa — Weekdays are spent on the road. Weekends are spent at home, usually in a small workshop in the basement.
The room is covered wall-to-wall with evidence of the trade — bodies, backs, bridges, pick guards — everything waiting to be assembled.
The shop is Steve Hinde’s escape.
“This is a nice place to come and relax,” he says.
Hinde, 49, has steadily carved out a name under the brand Hinde Custom Instruments. He’s one of just a few craftsmen in Iowa who make mandolins, though he has also built acoustic and electric guitars, a resonator guitar and a fiddle.
The work is equally hobby and business.
Across from his workbench are two finished mandolins and a mandola — a larger version of the mandolin. A nearby closet is cluttered with more instrument pieces and the first guitar he made eight years ago.
...Those lucky enough to get a custom guitar or mandolin appreciate the instruments.
“It was the first mandolin I ever saw that I was ever able to sit down and enjoy playing,” Rick Farris says.
He plays in the well-known bluegrass band Special Consensus.
Eddie Farris, Rick’s brother, also plays a Hinde guitar in bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs’ Kentucky Thunder band.
The Farris brothers met Hinde years ago at a bluegrass festival in Newton. Hinde later gave Rick Farris one of the first mandolins he made.More
