The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 36

D2 II BUSINESS SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 2014 FROM PAGE D2 B.C. provides ideal climate for six-string manufacturers You're guaranteed borderline poverty for a long time unless some hotshot guitar player endorses your guitar. MICHAEL DUNN LUTHIER AND TRAINER I I i I 3 Srh I ft 1 fZZ. 1 lm Many B.C. guitar makers are men in their 5Qs or 60s, a legacy perhaps of Vancouver's early hippie days.

"There's a romanticized view of guitar making," said Dunn, who turns 71 this month. "It's a lot of bloody hard work." Dunn has built 629 instruments to date. "Sometimes, I go into very high end modern furniture stores to get not that I've ever made any Danish tables, but sometimes there is very interesting use of wood." One of the first guitars Dunn sold in Nashville was to Chet Atkins. Now in semi-retirement, Dunn has written a book, soon to be published, on his early days as a luthier. He reckons it takes building 100 guitars to really understand what you're doing.

One key is bracing the wood so it's strong enough to hold the tension of the strings while keeping the guitar light enough to resonate properly. "That's the great juggling act every guitar maker faces," Dunn said. "Brace the thing too heavy and it won't sound properly. Brace too thin, and you'll have a collapse." As a luthier, you're going to eat chicken one day, and leathers the next, Dunn said. "You're guaranteed borderline poverty for a long time unless you get lucky and some hotshot guitar player endorses your guitar." "A real acoustic revival is going on right now.

We were lucky to get in early," said Blue-dog co-owner Paul Haggis. Many musical acts such as Mumford and Sons celebrate the acoustic sound. Guitars, mandolins, banjos and ukuleles are making a comeback. Sales of high-end and custom acoustic guitars have risen 39 per cent since 2009 while electric guitar sales have plummeted, according to the National Association of Music Merchants. More than half of guitar sales are now acoustic as trends in popular music shift from rock to more acoustic-focused country, according to the Music Business Journal.

As recorded music sales have dropped, music product sales have risen from behind and pulled ahead, the journal said. The market is expected to Guitars) have long made a decent living. Many others follow the call of the siren part-time or dance to their own glorious eccentricities. "You get a lot of these craftsmen who are living out on Vancouver Island or Saltspring Island, Denman Island, surrounded by trees and birds and all they want to do is sit in their garage and make guitars and play music," Hennig said. "They are really obsessed with wood.

These are guys building eight to 10 guitars a year and pouring their heart out into every single one." J. Romero Banjos is in the tiny, unincorporated village of Horsefly, B.C. "He doesn't need a dealer. People pay him a deposit and wait three years for a $4,000 instrument," Ladd said. Yusuke Kawakami of North Vancouver sells almost exclusively to Japan.

Ted Thompson "doesn't have a website. He has a phone number. If you call him and he's not there, there isn't an answering machine and yet he has a two year wait-list," Ladd said. There's a saying that goes around among the pragmatic folks in B.C.'s forest industry: "There's nothing goofier than a luthier. They all have their opinions." jennyleevancouversun.com WAYNE IFIDINFROSTPNG Meredith Coloma, 23, makes and repairs fine guitars and mandolins in Vancouver.

Her career as a luthier, or guitar maker, began when she was looking for an instrument that would easily fit into the small overhead compartments on airplanes. trnvpl OTiitnr ntf snirl thpv frAH mp wa flip ffinalictl rrmntli fnllnwino nnnrpntipp- travel guitar," Ladd said. they told me I was the (finalist) month following apprentice continue growing as boomers small Custom, locally made guitars hit the spot. "It's part of the 10-mile diet," Ladd said. The most popular price range is between $2,000 and $5,000, Ladd said.

Up-and-coming B.C. builders include Miltimore and his innovative guitar with an adjustable neck system that requires less bracing. He applied for the Business Development Bank of Canada's 2012 Young Entrepreneur Award for Canada, came second and credits the BDC with launching his company. "We were just a custom shop building one guitar a month if we were lucky. Through the contest, we sold maybe 100 guitars and we had to come up with some way to make them, so we kept expanding.

When age and wellness takes a bigger role in seniors' lives. Learning an instrument in old age will become common, the journal predicts. Industry trends match Ladd and Hennig's experience. The buyers and most of the guitar builders are baby boomers who finally have the time and money to realize their dreams. Small guitars that are kind to aging rotator cuffs and other joints tend to sell best, Ladd said.

"There's a ton of guys over 50 who'd rather buy a guitar than a Ferrari," Hennig said. Once they start buying, they can't stop. "You want a small guitar for the couch, a larger bodied guitar to play on stage or for doing an open mike, a for B.C. and asked what's my Twitter handle, I said Twitter I had no idea of that and it was a social media contest. We actually launched our website for the contest" One thing led to another, including BDC financing and mentorship, and Miltimore now has a deal with a global distributor to test the North American market.

"Now we've got an factory and seven employees," he said. The BDC award is open to entrepreneurs 18 to 35 seeking a turning point in their business. At 23, Meredith Coloma is an anomaly in the luthier world. The singer-songwriter started making guitars at 18 and opened her own Vancouver guitar workshop last ship with Michael Dunn and New York-based Roger Sad-owsky. She was Nellie Furta-do's ghost guitar player when she was 14.

Coloma tends to make small guitars. "For me it's comfort. Also, I travel a lot and nothing would fit (on the planes)," Coloma said. "Finally, I made an instrument for myself that fit perfectly in those tiny overhead compartments." She also makes Gypsy-style mandolins in a "mini guitar" style, and has been working her way through a two-year waitlist for her instruments. Established B.C.

luthiers like Ianonne, Dunn, Park, David Webber, Michael Heiden and John McQuarrie (Northwood More photos at vancouversun.conyaDeries See video with this story at vancouversun.com TRANSPORTATION ENERGY Indian Oil Corp. buys 10 per cent stake in B.C. gas project Double shipments of grain or face fines, Ottawa tells railway companies Announcement lauded by farmers with record crop sitting in bins RAKTEEM KATAKEY BLOOMBERG CHINTA PUXLEY THE CANADIAN PRESS mm The acquisition gives Indian Oil access to at least 8.35 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in British Columbia fields controlled by Petronas's Progress Energy Canada Ltd. unit. niwafc.

Canadian railway companies face the challenge of moving the biggest Prairie grain crop in history. NEW DELHI Indian Oil the nation's biggest refiner, agreed to buy a 10 per cent stake in Petroliam Nasional Canadian natural gas fields and a planned export project. The agreement with Petro-nas will also give the Indian state oil refiner the right to 1.2 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas per year for two decades, New Delhi-based Indian Oil said in a stock exchange filing Friday. It didn't give a value for the deal. The company lined up a $900 million US one-year bridge loan to fund the purchase, three people familiar with the matter said last month.

The acquisition gives Indian Oil access to at least 8.35 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in British Columbia fields controlled by Petronas's Progress Energy Canada Ltd. unit, Indian Oil said. India's proven gas reserves at the end of 2012 were 43.8 trillion cubic feet, according to BP Pic data. Indian Oil follows rivals including Oil Natural Gas Corp. and GAIL India Ltd.

in securing energy supplies through overseas acquisitions to meet surging demand at home. Petronas is seeking to bolster its finances to fund a record 300 billion ringgit ($92 billion US) spending plan to replenish Malaysia's diminishing reserves and has embarked on a worldwide review of its portfolio since chief executive officer Shamsul Azhar Abbas took over four years ago. Indian Oil shares rose 1.1 per cent to 267.25 rupees in Mum-bai trading today compared WINNIPEG Ottawa is forcing Canada's two main railway companies to double the amount of grain they ship in a week to try to unclog a transport bottleneck that has left piles of grain sitting in bins across the Prairies. Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said cabinet has passed an order-in-council that gives Canadian National and Canadian Pacific a month to start moving a minimum of one million tonnes of grain in 11,000 cars each week. If CP and CN don't meet the requirement, Raitt said they face fines of up to $100,000 a day.

The Conservatives are also promising legislation when Parliament resumes that will help ensure agricultural products get to market. "This is a very serious situation," Raitt said at a news conference in Winnipeg on Friday. "We have to demonstrate that Canada can maintain an efficient transportation system which is capable of moving our grain to market. This is an issue of great significance and we have to address it in a timely manner." Farmers and provincial governments have been complaining loudly that a bumper grain crop is still sitting in bins while prices fluctuate. Last year's harvest was up by about 20 million tonnes.

Ottawa has already chipped in $1.5 million for a five-year transportation study and ordered rail companies to report monthly on their performance. with the 1.9 per cent gain in the benchmark BSE Sensex. The deal was announced after the close of trading. Petronas acquired control of the project through its $5.2 billion takeover of Canada's Progress Energy in 2012, making it the second-biggest shareholder in British Columbia's Mont-ney shale-gas area. The Kuala Lumpur-based company aims to reduce its share in Pacific NorthWest LNG, which runs a gas-export facility, to as low as 50 per cent by selling stakes to Asian gas buyers, the unit's President Greg Kist said in November.

Japan Petroleum Exploration Co. bought a 10 per cent stake in the project last year. The LNG export project, with an estimated price tag of $9 billion to $11 billion, will produce as much as 19.68 million metric tons of LNG a year for 25 years starting in 2018, according to an application to Canada's National Energy Board. Petronas's plans to sell another 15 per cent stake in the project to another Asian LNG purchaser will be announced by the end of this month, Shamsul said March 4. CN and CP did not get a heads-up about Friday's announcement, Raitt said.

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said farmers are increasingly frustrated by the "poor performance of the railways." "The railways have dropped the ball," he said. "This situation is not acceptable." Ed Greenberg, spokesman for Calgary-based CP, said the railway will comply with the order. But he called the move unfortunate and suggested it didn't take into account the "entire supply chain." The issue is complex and goes beyond the railway, he added. The backlog has not been caused by a shortage of locomotives or crew, Greenberg said. "It's been a combination of an extraordinary crop size combined with extreme weather that has resulted in this situation," he said.

"And despite an extraordinary crop size that was not forecasted by anyone, and periods of extreme winter weather, our railway has continued to move record amounts of grain." CNs Jim Feeny said the company can comply with the order if everyone in the supply chain works together. The challenge in moving the biggest Prairie grain crop in history is unprecedented, he said. The company has been doing everything it can to keep grain moving but it has been hampered by extreme cold, Feeny said. "We have hundreds of employees in those locations who have spent the last three to four months working night and day outside in temperatures that have persisted at -30, -35. -40 and even beyond at times with very little respite," he said.

"But the reality is, when you get that kind of cold, across that kind of territory, for that length of time with no breaks, it has a severe affect on the mechanical ability to operate trains." Many farmers praised the order. "Obviously the government heard us," said Dan Mazier, vice-president of Keystone Agricultural Producers, who was part of a delegation that met with Raitt last week. "This is great news from a fanner's perspective..