General Managers came and went and Bruce spent more and more of his time supervising general production. The fret and sweat job was accomplished and, of course, Bruce kept the frets that Bill had played for so long. Bruce was really sweating by then and had to lock the door of the room he was working in because everyone was coming in to touch Bill’s mando while he was trying to get the work done.
The thought was nerve wracking enough but when he started the job the fingerboard was so dry it started crumbling away, sometimes in pieces the size of his thumbnail. During Bill’s visit to Montana, he asked Bruce to refret it before he played later that day. Bill wasn’t feeling well and was having problems with the fret board, and Bruce having no tools with him, just stood there and examined it until Bill went on again. He came off stage, shoved his mandolin in Bruce’s hands, and said, “Here, take care of this damn thing”. Bruce had been at the Opry when Bill was playing a few years earlier. Also, a highlight was when Bill Monroe visited in honor of the Limited Bill Monroe model mandolin with the design approved and the labels signed by Bill himself. He built his own F-style just the way he wanted it, many other fine instruments, and met many great people and performers. His only desire was to be in the custom shop designing and building custom mandolin family instruments, and he did have a lot fun with projects. The two pursuits in one factory just didn’t seem to be working for Gibson so the mandolins were separated becoming the Gibson/Flatiron Division in 1993. The new Gibson factory, Gibson/Montana Division, was built in 1991 where Bruce continued working on mandolins and managing their production at the same time overseeing the machine shop where he did the tooling for the reissue of the Advanced Jumbo and J180 guitars. Gibson Guitar bought Flatiron in 1987 and now Gibson mandolins were his playground. He loved tweaking his own instruments and was hired by Flatiron in 1987 where he began learning everything he could about what went into creating fine acoustic instruments. This was not surprising as Bruce had always been a builder, helping put up the family garage and shop at age 12, constructing a laminated recurve bow in high school shop class, creating wheel thrown pottery and carving wood sculpture. He got the strings he needed and, in addition, was almost immediately hooked on learning to build mandolins. Soon after arriving he went to the local music store for strings, they were out, but directed him to a little red shop. He’d picked up a flat top Flatiron mandolin right before moving to Bozeman, Montana. Perhaps for some it is new inspiration in playing or song writing, however for Bruce buying mandolin strings was a crossroads in his life. There can be a definite feeling of ‘possibilities’ when buying a new set of strings.
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