Tom Ellis grew up near Houston and enjoyed woodworking in his teens – mostly
building surfboards. He built his first mandolin in the summer of 1972, and
after graduating from college with a degree in photography in 1975, he
re-enrolled to take a woodworking class specifically to build an F-5 style
mandolin.
That mandolin was completed in the summer of 1977.
That year Tom moved to Austin and bought a house on 3 acres with a 1,500
sq/ft. shop in the back yard in which to build mandolins. Orders for his
custom mandolins started appearing immediately. In September that year he
took his second mandolin to the National Banjo Championships and was lucky
enough to show it to Ricky Skaggs who ordered 2 of them and began endorsing
Ellis Mandolins. Business was boosted in February 1981 when an article in Frets
Magazine featured an interview with David Grisman, who said that Tom was one
of the 5 best mandolin makers. Photos of Tom building Ricky’s second
mandolin appeared in the April '86 Frets Magazine that featured a visit to
Tom’s shop. That mandolin was also featured in Fine Woodworking Design Book
Four.
Tom continued building mandolins and a few banjos
but in 1992, with 3 children, he realized that custom building, which takes
hundreds of hours per instrument wasn’t going to pay the bills. He came up
with a plan for using CNC technology to manufacture pearl inlays for the
guitar industry, launching Precision Pearl Inlay. Since 1993
Precision Pearl Inc. has grown to include 6 employees and customers
from many fine custom guitar makers and major guitar manufacturers all over
the world.
In 2004, Tom began thinking about mandolins again. With his experience with
CNC technology, Tom began designing manufacturing systems to aid in the
production of mandolins by performing all of the rough cutting of the
mandolin bodies by machine. Then the pieces are carefully crafted by hand
and lovingly assembled, bound and finished by Tom and the rest of the team
at Ellis Mandolins, to produce beautiful, wonderful sounding instruments.
In Addition to building instruments Tom has been playing bass and singing
tenor in Austin since 1977. A long time member of the Grazmatics and founding
member of the Austin Lounge Lizards, he has also toured with Peter Rowan,
Junior Brown and recorded with Nanci Griffith on mandolin.
