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Have my OOO ready for pore filling and have been noodling with repairing a small hairline crack in the headstock inlay before going much further. At first I was just going to ignore the crack. But now, I am thinking of replacing the black epoxy in the crack with some pearlesque paint to better hide the crack. Anyone done this before? I am still annoyed the inlay cracked. I thought I was being very careful, but apparently I had just a little too much stress on the tail piece when gluing it in. Anyone successfully hidden a crack in an inlay before?

Ken

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http://www.casperguitar.com

If anyone has cracked an inlay, I have. Most recently, my best solution was to sand off the veneer and redo the whole bit.
In your case, I am not sure, you may be able to hide it if you texture the tail to look like some shading?

maybe some of the pros can shime in if there if a filler - bit maybe just a little ground pearl and epoxy would cover it up well enough....

Stephen

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www.ziegenfussguitars.com

Remove the inlay carefully and replace it.
There is NO way to easily hide a crack in a solid piece of pearl like that.

I know it's not what you want to hear, but it's the truth.


Good luck.

Craig L

www.handcraftinlay.com

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www.handcraftinlay.com

Craig, I think you are right. I tried sanding some pearl, mixing it with CA and applying it to a test sample that I had cracked. Result: very visible. I then tried some pearl paint. Result: very visible. So at this point, I need to decide if I want to cut a new inlay, and route a new cavity or just keep the existing one in there.

Thanks for the thoughts.

Ken

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http://www.casperguitar.com

Ken, I'm sorry your inlay cracked, and I'm even sorrier that I can't offer a single word of advice to help you fix it. But plenty of others will chime in and give you the guidance you need. I just wanted to tell you I think that is an absolutely great icon design. Man.....I wish I had thought of it!

Good luck with it.
Patrick

Where's the missing piece? I'd live with it.

It's not a mistake, it's a feature!
Widen the crack a bit, and make another near the head. Fill with CA and dust from the headstock overlay. Now youv'e worked your surname initial into the inlay.

Steve

I have found that accepting imperfection is just part of building guitars.

Thanks for the support folks. I have decided to leave the inlay as is. Yeah, it will be bug me some over the years, but it may bug me a whole lot more if my attempt to clean the cavity and inlay another turns out worse! I just need to be more careful on the next one. If this guitar were for someone else, I'd definately repair it. But it is part of my learning process--my 2nd guitar.

Patrick, thanks for the kind words on the design. I noodled that one for awhile, tweaking and adjusting to end up with what is inlaid. Lots of fish art out there, but I wanted my own design--not one someone would recognize from elsewhere. My entire fingerboard has flyfishing designs inlaid as markers.

Steve, interesting point you make. The idea originated with my desire to design something around a C. The intent was to inlay the trout vertically as if jumping out of the water. Doing that makes the C very obvious. I was going to cut the C out of abalone and the rest out of pearl. In the end, I decided it would look too gaudy, abandoned the idea, and just inlaid the trout horizontally. As I noted above, the fingerboard is flyfishing based so I wasn't overly concerned about a specific icon or logo on the headstock. I need to decide if I want to take this further and somehow use the design as a logo going forward.

Ken

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http://www.casperguitar.com