Michael Schuerman enjoys a challenge and likes to keep busy building things.
For the past couple of years, every morning the 74-year-old retiree gets up and goes to his office in the basement of his home just outside De Soto to pick up where he left off on his latest acoustic guitar project.
Schuerman is an amateur luthier – someone who makes stringed instruments.
He made his first electric guitar in the 1990s and has picked up the hobby again, this time with acoustic guitars.
After a stint in the U.S. Navy, Schuerman worked briefly in upholstery. While trying to learn the trade, Schuerman said his boss said something he’s never forgotten.
“I’m looking at (the furniture) and I’m trying to figure out what to do, and I told him, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ He said to me, ‘Somebody else built this and put it together, and you ought to be able to take it apart and put it back together again.’ He said, ‘If one person did it, you ought to be able to do it,’ and that’s kind of stuck with me all my life. ‘Another human being did it; you can do it.’”
In the mid-1990s, Schuerman, who was then working in car plants from Canada to Mexico as a millwright – someone who maintains machinery – said his 13-year-old son, Jeff, decided he wanted a guitar.
Schuerman said he was the same age when he first started playing guitar and later played in a band while attending high school in Ste. Genevieve.
While Schuerman already had a couple of guitars, he bought his son one of his own for $325.
“The more I looked at it, the more I thought I could build one of those,” Schuerman said.
He bought some walnut wood from a sawmill outside De Soto and made an electric guitar that his son still plays. He made about 20 or so other electric guitars over the years.
As a side job in the 1990s and early 2000s, Schuerman did guitar repair work independently for a store in Arnold and two in the Festus area. He still does some repairs, but not for any music stores.
‘Something to do’
Schuerman retired 13 years ago. For the first 10 years of his retirement, he and his wife, Carol, spent their winters in Florida. A couple of years ago, they decided to stay home in the winter to spend more time with their two sons – Jeff, who lives in Fenton, and Ben, who lives in North Carolina – and their two grandkids, Eva and Jack.
Schuerman said he and his wife also used to take motorcycle rides together, but they stopped that about seven years ago after seeing one too many accidents.
“So, I needed something to occupy my time,” he said. “I’m not a person who can sit in a chair and watch TV all day. In the mornings, I come down here and go to work. I enjoy building stuff out of wood because I like the way wood looks and I get satisfaction … I get more satisfaction out of doing that than I do playing the guitar.”
He tries different designs and colors. He applies an “MC” (Missouri Custom) logo to each one.
“Most of the guitars come out pretty good,” he said. “And they sound nice. If I can build them and they sound that good, I’m happy.”
Schuerman just started building acoustic guitars, rather than electric ones, last year. Each guitar takes about three months to make, he said.
He buys the wood from a warehouse in St. Louis and uses self-made tools to sand and bend the wood.
One of his guitars gets anywhere from 20 to 30 coats of Tru-Oil, a finish that Schuerman said makes the guitar feel as smooth and slick as glass.
He said he gently dabs – with a small piece of cardboard wrapped in a small square of an old T-shirt – two or three coats a day and lets it sit and cure for about two or three weeks before he starts polishing it.
“It’s super thin,” he said. “It’s almost like wiping water on something. That’s why it takes so many coats to build up. Thirty years ago, when I started, I did all nitrocellulose lacquer.”
An acoustic guitar he finished in early January is the one he is most proud of.
“I think it is one of the best ones I’ve done so far,” he said, adding he suspects his current project will be his next favorite. “I’ve refined a lot of stuff that’s in the bracing that you can’t see, and I love the look of it. So hopefully, it plays and sounds as good as I am thinking it will.”
Schuerman doesn’t claim to be a professional, but he believes he is getting better with each guitar he builds.
He said he’d like to get in touch with other area luthiers.
“Every one you do, you learn,” he said. “I think it is a learning process that goes on for a long time.”
While Schuerman started the hobby years ago, he suspects he’s made only a couple of dozen guitars over the years, which includes about four acoustic ones.
“A lot of years I didn’t make any,” he said. “I think I’ve made four since last Christmas.”
And he’s not necessarily building guitars to sell them.
“But if somebody really wants one, I’d be glad to sell them,” he said with some hesitation. “I’ve got more guitars than I need. I enjoy building these and I’ll probably just keep on building until I get tired of it.”
Schuerman may be reached at guitarmanrocks69@hotmail.com.
“Hopefully (my youngest son Jeff) has a use for all of this stuff. I think he will,” Schuerman said. “He doesn’t have time to mess with it (right now while raising two children). He’s bought a couple of kit guitars. I don’t think he’s even started on it.”
Schuerman has at least a couple of fans. Musician Gary Nester of De Soto said he has two of Schuerman’s guitars and is impressed with their quality and the fact that Schuerman uses self-made tools when creating them.
And of course, his wife of 55 years, Carol, is a fan. She said her husband is one of those people who can do anything. There’s a portrait hanging on the wall that he painted in his younger days, and with the help of a friend, he built their home.
“I’ve always been a person that likes the challenge of trying to build things,” Schuerman said.