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Hi all,

I'm making a Terz guitar for my son. He would like the fret board to have an inlay representative of brain cells, i.e. neurons. Sort of like this mock-up done on cardboard:



I'd like to give him what he wants, but have no ideas on how to do this. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

All I can think of is score into the surface and then some white epoxy, not hard enough though. That does look cool.

I had a client who gave me a container with a liquid plastic in it, Pat. It poured and flowed nicely but it dried very hard. The cool thing about it was it was white and glowed in the dark. ( I used it for oversized fret markers for him). I'll try and reach him and get a name from him. That may work for you and fit in to the concept at the same time.

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Blue Ring Acoustics
blueringacoustics.ca

Hmm, that is a tricky one, but also very cool. I want to suggest the technique of sawing all the way through with a jeweler's saw and then sticking veneer in the slot to do the fine lines, but with them all intersecting like that it would be in pieces by the time you got all the lines cut I suppose you'll just have to use a really small router bit. Possibly even just a knife score mark for the thinnest ones.

Make the big pieces from a good hard material like white MOP or corian, and after routing their pockets, freehand the fine lines. Get various thickness of pearloid sheet if using MOP, or fill with white epoxy if corian. I doubt wear would be an issue for anything but the big pieces, or perhaps any lines that happen to be underneath a string and in line with it.

I don't have any ideas on how to do this, but I have to say it will look pretty spectacular if you pull it off.

Ed

I don't think that would be too difficult actually, just very time consuming. I'd do it from white pearl and I'd section it off based on the spots between fret slots. Treat each segment as it's own inlay. Make the "blobs" then make each vein/arm individual.

Cut out the pearl first, keeping it on a work board of the print out. Once the pearl is cut start to position it on the board, working just on one section at a time. Place the "blob" down and draw around it with a 0.005" mechanical pencil. When routing cut just to the inside of the pencil line. Ebony for the board will be your friend. Just keep working at it, routing, testing fit, pressing each piece in and fill with CA. Then level the pearl. Move onto the next section. Make sure the board is radiused before inlaying.

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I looked for some pictures of neurons, and wanted to put some here, but my clipboard is flipping out (Linux Ubuntu) at the moment, and the bug isn't fixed yet. Point is they have more detail/color variation that may make it even more challenging than just the shape. There are some microscopic photographs as well as artist renditions, the latter are often colored to separate the individual parts, so you have choices.

cutting the fingerboard may be fairly easy since they are irregular, just like free form cuts with a rotary tool in a base. they could be filled with bone dust or fine bright wood rasping's and in epoxy. How to get the cell centers right as they have color more or less, may just be a matter of adding dye to the dust before mixing.

That's what you get for having smart children Pat!

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If what you see is what you get, then Stevie Wonder ain't got nothin'!

You might want to consider Inlace.

Well there is something I have not heard of yet! Thanks Gasawdust! Darn search engines, where is this information when you need it? I have been looking for more and different inlay materials! Going to read up on the stuff now.

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If what you see is what you get, then Stevie Wonder ain't got nothin'!

Thanks all for your interesting ideas. Thanks to Tom, I've spent the last couple of hours reading up on casting - starting with the Inlace. One of the more intriguing things I came across is Alumilite. Here's a link: http://www.alumilite.com/store/p/934-Al ... Resin.aspx Does anyone have any experience with this stuff? Think I could just pore it into my routed out fret board and sand it smooth? If that would work, that certainly opens up a lot of doors for inlay ideas.

Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

I have used Inlace on filling knot voids turning ugly into unique. It grinds easily in a coffee bean grinder.
I used some in a fretboard inlay on Charles Schultz characters where the pieces were too delicate for my jeweler's saw and tired old eyes.

One more thing to consider...titanium dioxide.....the whitest of whites. If you can get access to some, try it in slow set epoxy. It's used primarily as paint pigment and in it's produced form it is a superfine powder. I could try to send you and ounce or two if interested as I have access to tons of it.

Suggest laser! ( If you don't have access find a sign or trophy shop.)

Place template on copier make copy...... then scan.......you now have a computer file that is typically a Tiff file(bitmap)..... (Kinko, UPS etc for scanner/copy)

CorelDraw (Laser Operator should have this) has an auto trace program for converting to a vector file for the male part of the inlay........ bitmap is fine for the female part on the fret board.

The insert part will need to be probably .003 larger than the cut-out female part....... I'd suggest Corian or similar product for the actual inlay........(works well and is stable and easily glued)

Fairly simple after parts made...... You should be able to get this done at a fairly reasonable cost.

Blessings,

Kevin

I would probably cut inlays in the traditional sense but it would be a lot of work for sure. Definitely an ebony fret board and I would bind it with ebony after the inlays were done.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Actually liquid inlay materials have been around for a very long time -- I think there are many brands if you do a search. Irving Sloane even uses his own formula described in one of his books. Great design should be fairly straight forward transferring the pattern and cutting the rebates.

Here's one liquid inlay supplier:
http://woodworker.com/turquoise-inlace- ... 46-669.asp

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Thanks again for all your suggestions. Alumilite was available locally, Inlace was not, so here's the result of my test inlay using Alumilite resin:



It looks pretty good I think. If you have it on your screen larger than life you may notice a few horizontal lines left over from sanding. I wouldn't leave those on a fret board. There's also a relatively large bubble left over at the end of the top left axon. It's actually pretty hard to see in real life but I would probably try to fix one of those if it happened again. I'd try to do better at finding and "popping" those prior to cure. If you really blow it up you can see that there are lots of little bubbles. I gather that to not have those requires sticking the whole thing in a pressure pot while the resin is curing. However as I can't see these bubbles in real life, they are smaller than the pores in the surrounding wood, I'm not going to worry about them.

I also "de-molded" the cured "puck" from the bottom of the mixing cup. It feels like a reasonably hard piece of plastic. I went through the exercise of rough sanding it then sanding it smooth and eventually buffing it until it was shiny just to see if I could. It was easy - which is actually an indication that it's not all that hard. It's definitely not as hard as the polyester I use to finish guitars.I can mark it with my thumb nail. However I also tried rubbing guitar strings on it, pressing harder than I would if I was just fretting a note, and that did not leave any marks. So I think it will work but at the same time prudence would suggest not to put a big blog of the stuff right in the spots where fret boards get the most wear.

Cheers,
Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

How about filling the spaces with titanium dioxide and then shooting it with CA? I like the look of the design as one piece rather than multiple segments. Mind you I might like that if I seen it also.

Really great ideas here. I'm looking forward to seeing how you pull this off and with what method.

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I believe that pickguards are mixed and poured from resins. I know of one good luthier who makes copies of 1900-1920 instruments, and he routes the pickguard shape into the top, lays pearl pieces into the recess in a design, then pours the pickguard material into the recess - voila - inlaid recessed pickguard.

Ed

That does look pretty good Pat. I was going to suggest reconstituted stone but the more I thought about cutting the stone and doing the inlay with that much intricacy and continuous pieces I'm thinking go with the resin.

Oh, by the way, A neuron guitar is a very cool idea

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust