For Bruce Weber, the stacks of wood in his production shop aren't just fallen trees.

They have the potential for a new life.

"Every piece of wood is different," he said recently at the offices of Sound to Earth, Ltd., where the well-known Weber brand of mandolin is made in Logan, Mont.

"You are taking this material that was once living and resurrecting it, trying to bring it back to life, to its full potential. It takes time and experience."

When you walk into Bruce Weber's office, you first notice the dusty mandolin sitting on his desk. This is the shop mandolin, which makes the rounds throughout the building, just in case someone wants to knock out a little tune.

Hanging on the wall are two signed photographs -- one signed by Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music, and the other signed by Tina Turner.

When Weber moved to the Bozeman area in 1982 and went looking for mandolin strings, the local music store had none. He was sent to the Flatiron Mandolin and Banjo Company in Bozeman. He was so impressed that he went to work for them.

When Gibson purchased the company and decided to move to Tennessee in 1997, Weber dutifully helped set up the operation there. But he got homesick and returned to Bozeman.

It was shortly after his return from Tennessee that he and his wife, Mary, started Sound to Earth. The name comes from Bruce and Mary's interests Sound (mandolins) and Earth (pottery, which was to have been Mary's contribution). They started the business in the old pole barn on the their Bozeman property and recently purchased the old school house in Logan.

With the move to Logan complete, Weber decided to start making carved-top guitars, in addition to the mandolins. The line consists of five guitars, four arch-tops and one shallow carved-top (which looks like a flat-top).

When a player thinks of an arch-top, he usually thinks of the big jazz style guitars. These guitars are large, with the lower bout (the widest portion of the guitar) ranging from 17 inches to 18 inches wide. The Weber guitars, on the other hand, are only 15 inches, making them very comfortable to hold and play.

The other guitar in the line is a shallow carved-top, meaning the top is carved to accept the braces. By contrast, most luthiers (stringed instrument makers) press a flat thin top onto the arched braces.

Weber said that he had originally planned to build guitars and fiddles also, but the mandolins took off and the other projects had to go on the back burner.

Of the addition of the guitar line, he said, "It was a natural progression for us. We have more mandolin or carved-top instrument experience with our luthiers than anywhere else in the country."

Weber said he also felt that there was a gap in the market: With high-end arch-top guitars selling up to $17,000 dollars and the low-end imports flooding the market, there was a need for a high quality instrument at a reasonable price. The price for his guitars ranges from $4,500 to $9,000.

When wood is brought into the Logan shop, it is graded according to quality. But when the work begins the quality changes. What may have been a top-graded piece might have a flaw once it's cut into.

According to Weber "some of the ugliest tops sound the best." Some players don't care what the instrument looks like, they just want it to sound good; while others want a pretty instrument.

In contrast to the practice at most of the other companies he has visited, Weber has spent years learning how to tune a carved instrument top by scalloping the braces (the wooden pieces that give strength to the top) -- just one of the ways he breathes life and power back into the wood.