Official Luthiers Forum!

thought I would share with you something I came across yesterday which, at least in one part, is probably an ancient technique.
I needed to fill small gaps in a rosette (best not to say why!) with black and I had the idea of using charcoal and CA (the not ancient part). I took a piece from my wood burning stove, ground it in a pestle and mortar to a really fine dust, pushed in into the area needing filling and flooded it with CA. I'm really impressed by the results. Really black and somehow just a good consistency to scrape down. Good thing also is that you can make a lot of dust very quickly and it's very fine for getting into small gaps.
Anyone else know any "household fillers"?

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

ebony dust + CA= super black, and very very durable....

Some people use photocopier toner. I've never tried it but it seems plausible.

You can buy it as "lampblack".

I use powdered Tempra paint. Works great. Cool idea to try charcoal, though.
Years ago, I used ground pencil "lead" & it worked fine too.
I tried ebony dust a couple of times, but it didn't come out as black as I wanted. Guess I shoulda used more dust.

I used ebony dust before but all the sanding for a little amount. With charcoal you can grind a lot in a few minutes and it's very fine.

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

I've made a few rossettes with charcoal and white glue. It's called mastic. You make pearl decorative pieces and glue them in the rossette channel and then press the mastic in like putty and let it dry. Then scrape back flush and you have a pearl design in a black background. Looks great and is fairly easy to do.

So yeah charcoal as a filler is great.