Well, it is time to try my hand at some inlay. I have never done this before so I am excited yet somewhat apprehensive about it. My gold pearl pieces and jewelers saw with blades arrived today so I figured there was no better time than the present to get started. First, I made a little cutting jig and set up a spot light to work with. I made a few copies of my design and cut one out. My first obstacle was figuring out how to mark my design on the pearl. After a few failed attempts to cut out a template from plastic, I decided to use some spray adhesive on the pearl and then stick the paper design on it. Once it dried, I cut out the pieces through the paper. It worked fine, but I have to think that there must be a better way to mark it. None the less, I had 5 pieces that make my design with no breaks! I was pretty surprised that I didn't break anything. Once that was done, I decided I wanted to do at least one practice cut in some scrap wood before I have at my guitar with a dremel. I used some scrap mahogany to cut out the design. It worked pretty well using a dremel with a couple of rasp head cutters. One is 1/8" in diam, and the other is 1/32" in diameter to get into the tight spots. I also used my x-acto knife with a few different blades and cutters to do the cleanup. I am pretty happy with the results. The cutout is not perfect by any means, but it is fairly close. I figure that epoxy with sanding dust will make the inlay look good. All of this took me a few hours to do, so I decided I will actually cut the guitar peghead tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Only a few pictures today. I was pretty focused on what I was doing and forgot to take pictures of some of the steps. This is the final design I settled on. I cut this out and glued it to a piece of pearl.
Here are the pieces all cut out and sitting on my template of the headstock. I am happy with the way this turned out, and it's size compared to the headstock. There are 5 pieces here. The long pointy piece in the middle going left to right is only 1mm wide at the thick end. It is like a big splinter!
Here it is inserted in the mahogany piece I practiced on. Not perfect but definitely acceptable.
1 comment:
I am so jealous. I tried and tried to make my own inlay design at first. I had breaks all over the place - I put it down to having the wrong tools.
Yours looks great. It's a very striking design
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