Back inlay....

I didn't have much time tonight to work on the SJ as we had another work night at the church. Lots of painting still needs to get done before the new youth leader moves in! Anyways I did get an hour or so out there so I decided to do the inlay 'repair' pieces on the back. I came up with a curved point design that I wanted to use that would first off cover up the little router mishap, but would also enhance the look of the guitar. I originally was going to use maple to do this but at the last minute I remembered that I had some scrap box elder from the rosette that would really look good. I layed out both pieces (top and bottom) using as much of the pink coloring as I could and cut them out. I routed out the channel to fit the pieces making sure that I only routed about 1/2 of the thickness of the back plates. On the neck end I could have routed the full depth of the pieces of box elder with no problem because the neck block was longer than the inlay piece, however the tail end piece was longer than the tail block length so I had to make sure I didn't route through the back plate. Once it was routed to fit, I glued and clamped them in place. Tomorrow I will sand them flush and get a good idea of how well my routing job was. I think I got a good tight fit, but it is hard to tell for sure because of the thickness of the inlay pieces. I think the color looks good and it matches the rosette so the back and top tie together a little bit.

This is the tail piece. Once it is dry and sanded to thickness, I will run the router with the binding bit along the edge to clean it up flush with the binding edge.

The neck end. This wood really has a nice 3-D look to it. It should look great under finish.