Max Krimmel is lucky to have learned from an early age what it was like to be a successful artist. At age 8 he won his first prize for a Kachina Halloween costume that included a spectacular headdress, leggings and loafers. “At age 12, he won first, second and third place in a 1960 Denver model car contest. His prized vehicle was a reproduction maroon wooden surfer wagon with velvet drapes and working door handles. (still a family heirloom), and two similar outrageously decorated reproductions”. Max says, “As an adult, I haven’t been able to repeat that act of sweeping all the places in a competition.”

Max likes to do things, all kinds of things. Often the creation of him begins with a new hobby, such as playing the guitar. Shortly after starting to play the guitar, he wanted to build one. So Max signed up for a class called “Build Your Own Peach Box Guitar.” At the time, boxes of peaches were discarded from grocery stores after the peaches were stored, so there was plenty of free material available with which to practice guitar building.

For his third guitar, Max had moved to higher quality woods and between 1965 and 1982 built 167 guitars for such notable musicians as: Jerry Jeff Walker, Stephen Stills, David Bromberg, Bob Shane (of the Kingston Trio), Carla Sciaky, Mary Flower , Chuck Pyle and Bonnie Carol. Max claims that he “he was doing the right thing, in the right place, at the right time”. He is being modest with that statement; if he didn’t have the incredible talent and ability that he does, no one would have paid attention to his guitars in the first place. Max made excellent quality acoustic guitars and musicians bought them.

Max Krimmel’s next “right place at the right time” came after he started working with wood. “My early woodturning jobs were an extension of my luthier work. My guitar necks were cut from a solid piece of Honduran mahogany, so each cut of the guitar neck created a nice wedge-shaped scrap.” For some reason I kept all the shims. One day I did the obvious and glued some of these shims into a solid block. Around the same time I became the caretaker for a vintage 1950’s Craftsman lathe. I didn’t know what was going on to do with this big mahogany cake, but lathe and turning came to mind. In the end, I cut several plates out of the wedge blocks. This was around 1973. It took me about two years to build guitars to make enough wedges for a wedge plate. So after I had used all my available Shims I didn’t do much with the lathe except the occasional little piece of solid wood.”

The next step in Max’s woodturning came a few years later, inspired by his partner, Bonnie Carol’s quiltmaking. His extensive collection of interesting wood scraps ended up in Mondrian-type bowls (photo). Max began turning alabaster in 1986 after seeing Lee Carter give a quick demonstration of alabaster turning. He eventually abandoned wood in favor of alabaster. “It’s hard to say exactly why, I liked the precision of the alabaster and the homogeneity of the material. I had also seen quite a bit of beautiful wood in my life and the stone was new. There are still wood chips that I would like to make and if I live long enough, I probably will.” says max In 1988 he sent slides of his work to the International Exposition of Turned Objects and five pieces were accepted into the show, two in wood and three in alabaster. It was quite a prestigious show, “I didn’t know the pieces were that good,” says Max.

From June 1999 to July 2000, Max Krimmel had one of his wheel-turned alabaster vessels on display at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC The piece is now a permanent part of the Smithsonian collection. This was the second time he had the honor of having his artwork on display at the Smithsonian. The first was in 1979 when one of his handcrafted guitars was part of the Harmonious Craft: 20th Century Musical Instruments exhibit. Max’s work is also in the art collections of the Hoyt Art Institute in New Castle, PA, Boeing Aircraft, the Denver Art Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

While having your work displayed in a gallery as prestigious as the Smithsonian is an incredible honor, visitors don’t necessarily equate the exhibit with someone who is trying to make a living selling such pieces. The most challenging part of your job is marketing. Basically, Max, like all of us, still needs to market his work and make a living. Max’s pieces are available in fine art galleries across the country, as well as through his website at. maxkrimmel.com

Max belongs to the Association of Professional Turners and has taught at various symposiums. He loves to create and he also loves to see how people react to what he creates. He writes tutorials and posts them for free download on his website. Max embodies the artistic process of perfecting your creation and then taking it to the next level. He currently plays in a marimba band and builds marimbas as a result.

From his marimba bass construction process: “The idea for this bass originally came to me at Zimfest ’99, while looking at the beautiful balafons made by Marimba One. Rooted in traditional balafons, these instruments look like a warped marimba, the ends are raised, the center is depressed. It was a lot of fun playing the balafon, the mallets just seemed to bounce off the bars and with just a bit of vector correction land on another note – great I had been thinking of a bass for Chimanimani why not a bass balafon ?Whew! What a mechanical nightmare, well, maybe just bend it a bit, or maybe bend it in the horizontal plane instead of the vertical plane. Hmm, that would waste a lot of space,…unless I had to do the bars in wedge shape….Would wedge shaped bars work….then the frame would be one big curve….And that would be a lot of trouble to do.So the idea stuck there, I did some drawings but i got stuck on an easy way to ha close the frame med as too much trouble. So I thought of an easy way to make a form and my fate was sealed. I had a two week window in October 1999, I thought that would be plenty of time. OK, I would build that bass. If it worked, great, we’d have a bass. If it didn’t work, he would have interesting and expensive firewood. Now, months into that two-week window, I’m still tweaking bass, other projects being embarrassingly delayed or scrapped entirely. Aren’t there twelve step programs for bass building addicts?”

“So, to save others the trouble, or perhaps create more members for the BBA (Bass Builders Anonymous), I offer the following information,” says Max: maxkrimmel.com

Top 10 Max Krimmels Tools

1. Rockwell monoplane – 30 years

2. Rockwell disc and belt sander

3. Rockwell Band Saw

4. Rockwell thickness sander

5. Lathe – workhorse for turning

6. Craftsman lathe – first lathe given to him

7. Radial arm saw

8. Hercules Dust Collection System

table saw, joiner, planer and mortiser

9. Various hand tools

10. Alabaster