Trying to find apprenticeship opportunities

[PRSpoggers]

I've tried so many places but Covid has prevented it! I live in Maryland and PRS guitars are manufactured 45 minutes from my house and I tried asking them for an apprenticeship at PTC (PRS tech center) or an informational interview and they said they can't let anyone from the public accept factory employee's in! I would LOVE to become an apprentice but I don't know where to look. Advice on what I do? I want to pursue luthiery but I also want to be able to make money when I am older.

[Bizman62]

26 minutes ago, PRSpoggers said:

Advice on what I do?

Wait. During the waiting time view a thousand guitar building and other woodworking videos, read a hundred books about the subject(s) and build a dozen guitars from scratch. This covid thing won't plague us forever and if you use the time for gathering knowledge and improving your skills they'd be much more interested in you than they would be now.  You've said elsewhere that your woodworking skills and experience aren't much worth mentioning. Practice, learn to use the tools and create things you can show the PRS people when they are available again. Passion is a good thing but there's twenty guys in a dozen thinking guitar building would be the coolest way to make a living.

I've already told about my friend who wanted to become a luthier. Among other things there was an entrance exam and all that was known beforehand was that you could bring your own carving knife or use the crappy ones provided by the school. My friend had never carved anything in his life so he asked me for a lesson. So I showed him the basics of sharpening and made him carve shavings out of some firewood for a spoon shaped object, trying to give him a feel about grain and working directions. - Later he told me that the task was to carve a knife out of wood. Most of the applicants had just made a sharp stick while one guy was already carving grip grooves to the handle of a perfect lookalike of the knife he was using.