GRAND FORKS, (AP) - When Dr. Kevin Muiderman refers to plastic surgery as his day job, he's joking, but just barely. This doctor has a second passion for guitar music and for building what some say are among the finest acoustic guitars being played today.

"The guy's nuts, he's just so talented," said Michael Chapdelaine, who has won first prize in two top world classical and fingerstyle guitar competitions.

"Kevin is becoming one of the major guitar builders," Chapdelaine said.

Muiderman, a plastic surgeon for Altru Health System, moved with his family to Grand Forks in February from Neenah, Wis. His guitar-building workshop, on the lowest level of his split-level home, smells nicely of wood shavings, has enough light to perform surgery and includes a stereo with Bose speakers so Muiderman can listen to guitar music as he builds his guitars.

What's really fun, he said, is playing the music of the artist whose guitar you are building, while you are building it.

"When I was in Neenah, it was another small town like Grand Forks, and I had been used to living in places like Detroit, where I could hear my favorite musicians," Muiderman said. "Eventually, they would all come to play there."

In Neenah, that seemed unlikely.

"So I started my own music concert series," Muiderman said. He would bring in guitarists and, as interest and audiences grew, developed a fan base that he could e-mail and sell out tickets for the concerts in a matter of days.

That's what Muiderman hopes will happen with performances he brings to Grand Forks. There's no real financial boon to him for sponsoring the concerts, he said, but he does get to hear great guitar music, meet other guitar enthusiasts and - as a bonus - sometimes opens for the performers.

Muiderman has been playing guitar since he was 9. He grew up in Holland, Mich., and remembers being enthralled listening to his Uncle Scott play "Old Blue" and other folk music of the day on the guitar, singing in a deep, rich voice.

"I've always just loved acoustic guitar music," Muiderman said. "I don't know why. It's just in me somewhere."

He's also always loved "building stuff" - woodworking, metal, sculpture and art. When he was in high school, he would watch a local man build guitars and consider how wonderful it would be to combine his love for guitars with building them.

Eleven years ago, after he finished college, medical school and his residency, Muiderman - who still was playing guitar and writing songs - began attending Leeds Guitarmakers' School in Northampton, Mass.

"This fit me the best because I could do one-on-one tutorials with these guitar-making masters," the doctor said. "It fit me and my time constraints. I would take one- and two-week vacations, sometimes with my family, sometimes not. They were the greatest vacations I ever had because it was a dream come true."

Muiderman starts with raw wood he buys from a supplier in California. Then, he works and shapes the pieces, using some power tools, but mostly hand tools, such as chisels and planes.

He uses rosewood or maple, because they're very hard, for the back and sides. The tops tend to be spruce or cedar so they can move, and necks often are made of mahogany because it's a stable wood.

The fingerboards are ebony because it's one of the hardest woods and resists finger wear, he said. Each guitar he makes has decorative inlays, including a stylized "M" for Muiderman.

"I learned to make purely traditionally crafted instruments," he said. "But I found I could get more controllable sound by adding some graphite in the braces in the top and some Kevlar honeycomb to the top. It's much stronger and lighter, and it helps me get a unique sound that I couldn't get any other way."

Custom-made acoustic guitars can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $20,000; his base price is $8,400, Muiderman said.

What does guitar making have in common with performing plastic surgery? A lot, Muiderman said, while showing his workshop to visitors.

"The sensibilities are common or transferable," he said. "Both have to do with having an image in your mind and then making it."

He has recorded his own CD, "Earthward Bound."

Muiderman, his wife, Amy, their children, Jenna and Hayes, and their cats live in a new home in south Grand Forks filled with brightly colored paintings and other art, including Amy's weavings (she has three looms).

Muiderman's been playing his guitar since high school, although, he says: "I'm finding my way still. It takes a lot of time to practice and spend an evening performing."