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I was asking about inlay earlier. I decided to take some scrap laying around and just try it. The emblem (is that the word ?) I think is Douglas Fir and the neck I think is Walnut. The emblem is way thicker than it needed to be which made it more work. Also I bought a finer blade for my coping saw. The glue is CA.

After covering it in CA, I wiped up the excess with toilet paper. I saw a little bit of smoke and got a whiff of something that woke me up.
I am thinking I should radius after doing the inlay, but I don't want to smear dark dust into the inlays. I can see this process works better with a darker fingerboard wood. I think for the real inlay, I might get some of those under the bridge maple patches from StewMac. Feel free to advise.

Cutting pockets by hand is difficult, especially in hard woods as are used for fingerboards. Get a dremel and StewMac router base if you can afford it.

What are you using to mark around the piece before cutting the pocket? A sharp pointed scribe works much better than an x-acto knife.

A jeweler's saw is a must for cutting pieces. Coping saw is way too coarse. I also have the feather weight fret saw from Lee Valley, which I bought for cutting out plates using a spiral blade, but also works with regular jeweler's saw blades for cutting inlays when the stock is too large for a regular jeweler's saw. But it's a bit harder to control, so I use the little one when possible (I have the one LMI sells).

Be careful with CA and paper towels. It dries by chemical reaction with air, which releases heat, and the porous structure of the paper exposes a huge surface area of glue to the air, thus generating heat very quickly (and releasing a lot of fumes, as you've discovered). It will ignite if you get enough on there.

I commonly buy head plate/bridge plate blanks from luthier suppliers to use as inlay material. They're still a little thick, but you can just chisel/plane/scrape the pieces down after gluing them in. Now that I think about it, I should buy one of those springy Japanese flush cutting saws for this...

And you can radius before inlaying if you want. I do it this way for shell inlay, so I don't fluff shell dust everywhere while sanding the radius. Route the pockets first, then radius, then glue the pieces, and scrape them flush. But for wood inlays I generally radius after, just because it saves the scraping step. You can give a light scraping to clean off dust if necessary, and it's not like they'll stay pristine for long on a fingerboard anyway.

Is that a waxworm inlay?

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Jason Moe
LaCrosse WI 54601

You are correct, I used an x-acto knife. Thanks for all the good info. Mr. Tax Refund will allow me to buy a couple tools and a dremel router thing and jeweler's saw are on my list.


As much as I love waxworms (especially with ketchup), it was kind of meant to be a sound wave. Or a vibrating string, everything thing is made of vibrating strings.

Actually the advice to get a dremel for the routing can be improved on, I went this route for the 1st guitars I did then decided to go for the high speed pencil grinder, I made a base similar to John Hall's and started with a cheap air grinder at 40,000 rpm and now have one of the higher cost and higher RPM units. It cuts the hardwood like butter and allows more accurate results as you are applying almost no pressure to make the cuts.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

Thanks Fred. I did a quick search and it seems most of the pencil grinders are pneumatic, which probably won't work for me since my shop is my apartment bedroom at the moment. I will look around and maybe consider that foredom tool. Having the right tool is a wonderful thing.

If you don't mind holding something a little more bulky a laminate trimmer with a reducing collet will allow you to use dremel size bits. The laminate trimmer has plenty of power and a multitude of other uses.

you can use a foredom or dremel to rout out the base veneer.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I am not sure if you stated, but it looks like you gouged out the pocket by starting at the edge and prying your way in. If you cut by hand, I think it works better to cut out a smaller pocket that you need, then trim the edge to desired final dimension with verticle cuts using a tiny blade.

Well...at least until a more comprehensive theory arises in a few hundred years

CA + sawdust is always darker than the original wood color if there's space (so if you use a darker headstock wood but mix that sadust with CA to fill gaps, it will still be darker). It is near impossible to get an inlay done with no space. If you use a headplate in rosewood or ebony, get some clear epoxy and dye it with pigment powder (stewmac has them to match rosewood and ebony). Hides the lines much better. I have found the stewmac rosewood pigments are a near-perfect match for dark, straight grained madagascar rosewood (nicer than Indian IMO).

I'm more inclined toward the spherical standing wave theory myself (if you're in the mood for some heavy reading, go through the particle series on blazelabs.com)


I'm too lazy for that, so I just collect up some of the router chips and pack them in the gap along with some glue (I use hide glue, but fish, white or yellow should be fine too). Not as good as dyed epoxy, but doesn't darken as much as dust and CA.

haha I'd better read up on that! Never heard of blazelabs.com

Cut it out, dying clear epoxy really isn't that time consuming. If you consider the time you spent collecting sawdust and chips to mix up with glue I really don't think it adds enough time to this step for one not to use. Especially when you consider the hours spent all together completing whatever project you're working on that calls for inlay.

Again, all my experience is from furniture making not guitar making (sound like a broken record). But I agree with the advise on using a laminate trimmer and using collets for bits that are smaller than the 1/4" chuck. I personally feel like I have more control using a larger and heavier router than you'd think I would need for the inlay. It just feels more rock solid and moving it around with hair splitting accuracy is easier for me with the larger router.

I also like inlaying by hand but doing this without a small router plane and the right blades is not at all easy. Depending on which way you want to go, hand tools or power, determines the tools you'll need to acquire. Either way I do feel you'll need to invest in some tools. Lee Valley has a nice selection of router planes and small blades designed for small inlays. I own Lie Nielsen's and get by with their setup though.