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I was wondering how you go about putting a letter say the first letter of your last name on the headstock, i have a peice of mop but would it be hard to cut say a D out of it or is there another material you could use that wood be eaisier?

Would would be easier, that dust is real toxic, so be careful! Respirator, not cheap mask.

Maple could be a good alternative if your not dead set on the 'mop' look.

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Maple is a good idea, but if you want to go with MOP I would recommend buying the letter already cut from somebody like Andy DePaule. Single letters are $3 - $4 a piece, and well worth the money if you don't have the tools to cut your own.

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Kinda depends on the look you are going for. MOP is a pain to cut but I have had decent luck with a good inlay saw from stew mac and the medium blades. I make a paper copy of the design/letter I want then glue stick it to the MOP. Then I use the saw. Which makes all the difference, and cut out the letter. Go slow and easy and you can get pretty detailed. This is just a basic shape I made, check that, my daughter made, but you can do more. It will not be perfect so a set of jewlers files is what I use to clean up the rough edges. The MOP is not nice for your lungs so wear a mask. It takes a while but you can do it! I clamp a piece of plywood with a very severe "v" notch out of it to support the fragile MOP. My fingers cramp up often as I try and keep the pearl down as I saw. I then lightly superglue to the position I want. Scribe with an Xacto knife. Remove pearl with superglue debonder. Rub chalk into the scribed line. with small bit in my dremel and router attatchment I rout out the shape. I find this to be a bigger pain because all the sharp points I made require you to get all of it out. You want the inlay to sit flat as possible in your cavity. If you look around many MOP inlay is put in very dark woods. Because small errors in the carving out the cavity can be hidden with epoxy and sawdust that you put your MOP in to in the cavity. If you notice my pic you might see some dark edges around the light colored fingerboard. You need to have quite a bit lighter sawdust because when you mix it in the epoxy it gets much darker. It looks like junk until you sand it all level.
What I would suggest is make your D easy to cut not too fancy, practice on scrap, get the right saw, read read read. I didn't know what I was doing but with books, articles, internet, and the fine folks at OLF I have had a good time with inlay. Not much more will make your project yours that your own personal inlay!!!!

Hi Rebel,
There are a few good inlay books around if you want to investigate the technique further but here's a brief description of the type of inlay you want to do.You could use a computer to find a nice font and print off the D in the size you want, roughly cut around the D and glue (A thin layer of Titebond should hold it there long enough for what you need) it onto the MOP or I usually trace onto the MOP with a layer of carbon paper between the pattern and pearl. Any internal area's that need cutting out (such as inside your D) drill a small hole. You will need a jewellers saw with probably a fine blade in it, support the MOP whilst cutting to the lines either on the glued on pattern or carboned lines, the support can be a 10-12mm thick piece of wood or MDF with an 8mm hole in it that the blade goes through. Here's Stewmacs swept up version which will give you an idea of what the board looks like. Make sure you wear a mask,pearl dust wasn't designed to be inhaled!
Once the MOP is cut out I mix up some (usually Yellow because my headplates are ebony) poster paint and paint on the headplate where the inlay will go. Once it's dry put the MOP inlay on where you want it to go, hold it down and draw around the D with a sharp point. What you are trying to do is remove a thin line of yellow around the inlay so you are left with a nice,crisp dark line that is the outline of your inlay. You then carefully rout out the area in the lines with a dremel, to a depth a bit less than the thickness of your pearl so that when it sits in it's newly routed out 'pocket' the MOP is about 5-10 thou proud of the headstock face. If you are inlaying into ebony or a black face, mix up some black epoxy (clear if headstock face isn't black!), spatula it into the pocket then push you inlay into the pocket, excess epoxy will ooze out but leave it. Leave the whole thing to harden overnight then clean off the excess glue and file/sand off the inlay until it's flush. Some end results


If you just want to do this on one guitar and don't want to go to the expense of getting a few tools, I used to get those sheets of rub on letters (You know the type, you rub on the face of the sheet with a pencil and the letter gets stuck to what ever you are putting it on), they come with several different fonts & stand up pretty well to all finishes. They are quite thin so don't need alot of coverage with clear to level up afterwards. Or, as I have just read preceding posts, take Wayne's advice and buy a precut D, still have to cut the pocket out but it saves some expense.

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Nick Oliver

http://www.oliver-guitars.com

I just tonight finished up my first attempt at Inlay (on my first build )

I just bought one of the pearl cutting saws and a small blank from Stew Mac. I used the saw and a couple of small files (flat and half-round) to carve the letter (I printed it using Word I think, forget what font it is and super glued it to the shell). I did the cutting on a piece of hardwood clamped to my bench with a slot cut into the end and the shop-vac nozzle rubberbanded on. My eyes are not what they used to be, and a lighted magnifier was a huge help with this.

Kudo's go to John Mayes "Inlay" DVD for teaching the basics well enough for me to get this done with decent results for a first try.

Funny story. I was being extra careful keeping the vacuum drawing the dust off of the cutting board... on my first attempt at cutting the letter, when I made the last cut to relieve the letter from the larger blank.. whoooooosh.. right into the vacuum. It sucked! :p Took me a few minutes to fish the pieces out of the hose... The second attempt at cutting the letter went much faster.

I used a 3/64" bit in a dremel with a stew mac precision base to route the headstock. The wedge on the headstock is cocobolo, but I used sawdust from a scrap piece of EIR mixed with the epoxy to fill.

Guitar is still in the white, and should be headed off to Joe White to work his magic on later this week.

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Jim Hansen

Jim H - that headstock is GORGEOUS!!!

Nice work!!!

Makes me want to try something like yours.

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P A U L B U R N E R
Burner Guitars

Ditto what Paul said.