I'm Sam, a middle aged Northern Irish luthier who due to redundancy is trying to build a small business out of a lifelong hobby.
I build my guitars in the small but historic Irish seaside town of Carrickfergus under the name BTLX (pronounced Battleaxe).
I like to work with a combination of traditional materials and methods, combined with modern composites such as carbon fibre, and I'm a fan of finding new and different ways to achieve things.
With that in mind, my scratch build for the competition is going to be a semi hollow violin style body with the top and back made from carbon fibre composite and the sides constructed from a walnut and carbon composite.
The neck is being carved from Beech and the fretboard from Iroko - Unusual choices I know, but I get excited by unusual.
Finally, in keeping with the weaponry theme of my luthiery name, I'll be using my favourite brand of pickups, "Warman", a lesser known British brand who make exceptionally good pickups at amazing prices - in this case it's going to be an overwound double hotrails humbucker.
My chosen charity for this build when it comes to the auction at the end will be the Royal British Legion. It seems only fitting as I'm a proud veteran of Her Majesties Royal Air Force, and the Legion have been very helpful and supportive and helpful towards my whole family in times of need.
To those about to build, I salute you.

You can visit my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRHb7P2p7firfi9jQ9plP-w

 You can see the video of my final build here: https://youtu.be/zxy_xnbjwXU