Inlays Help

[shieshky]

i need help im thinkin of carvin a name into teh top eight frets of my bass neck then filling it in with wood filler of a differnt colour. i need advise if anone knows how i would go about doing this

cheers

[Adam85]

hrmmm i wouldnt do it but thats me, it would have to be some good filler though.

[jnewman]

Very very carefully .

If you really want to do it, get a dremel of some variety with the tiny router bits and a very sharp chisel. Cut out the pieces you are going to inlay first, then place them on the board (with an adhesive) and go around the edges with an xacto knife. Use the dremel with router bit to remove most of the material, and use the small chisel to make clean corners. Make sure you leave some extra sticking out so that you can sand them down to the fretboard surface and get them properly radiused. Please practice this on scrap before you try it as it's not as easy as it sounds.

Unless you're talking about something like bondo or wood putty, in which case I'd tell you to scrap the idea and either start practicing real inlay on scrap wood until you're comfortable with it or pony up some cash and pay someone who does that kind of thing for a living to do it. Wood putty or bondo looks fine - sanded and under paint. Putting it out front in a fretboard wouldn't look so good.

[Devon Headen]

Definitely do an inlay. Just cutting a cavity a filling it would be hard to do perfectly, and even then it would look cheap.