Cyber Virgin Getting Feet Wet

[a guitar player andaman]

aloha everyone thank you for your being so kind and wise i am trying to find a way to get this message through. please be so kind and patient with this cyber fool. i have been making and playing my first electric guitar for 27 years now and am now on my third set of tuners. the first was grover, chrome, 12:1 ratio, the second, grover, gold, 14:1 ratio, and now i have some gotoh 510 deltas, 21:1 ratio, antique gold, with "ebony buttons" which turned out to be high grade black plastic. this is my quest--to find an insert so that i may make my own buttons from some select abalone. any ideas? thank you all for being here. a guitar player andaman

[skibum5545]

I'm not sure what you mean by an insert, first of all. Lemme get this straight-- your intention is to make tuner buttons, so you want to find a way to have a squared-off hole in a chunk of abalone so the button will fit onto the tuner body?

Seems to me, you could hammer some small brass/copper tube down to the right shape, imbed it in a round hole in the abalone, and fill the gaps with CA/epoxy.

Or maybe I have no idea what you're actually talking about. Either is possible.

[a guitar player andaman]

thanks skibum you grokked my intent, to find a source of inserts that would fit the flatted shaft of the tuner, round on the outside. hammering a tube to shape is beyond my present skill level in metalworking, i am mostly a woodturner. the other idea i had was to carve some wax to shape and make some castings. the abalone i've been beachcombing has yielded some nice plectrums, .7 to 1.4mm, that wear well. feel nice and sound great, so now i am ready for some buttons to replace the faux ebony.