Installing Inlays In Pre-radiused Fretboard?

[vaxination]

i have a pre-radiused fretboard that has a 10-16 compound radius. however, it does not have any dot inlays. i would like to install the dot inlays. how do i get the dots level with the board? since it is a compound radius, i can't use a fretboard radius sanding block. am i going to have to carefully file/sand the dots individually or is there some cool technique that someone has to accomplish this?

[Nitefly SA]

you could just put them a little below the surface and make them flat.

[Duff Beer Man]

ur gonna have to put them in, leave them a little above the board, take some 60 grit and just do them one by one. Start off with 60 but work ur way up as they get closer to the board, thay way by time they are flat you are up to a high enough grit so the sanding scratch are pretty much gone. BTW why no radius sanding block? are u not planning on sanding the fretboard at all?

[soapbarstrat]

60 grit ? Oh man, that's way too coarse.

I made these from scratch last week :

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/soa...new_inlays5.jpg.

I pre-radiused them before putting them in. Left them sit maybe .003" above the surface of the board then leveled.

[Duff Beer Man]

i say 60 just to start it out, i always start 60 makes things easier for me, eh maybe its just me

[soapbarstrat]

I can't remember what I started out with, but it couldn't have been any more coarse than 120. I think I took that photo at the 220 or 320 stage, but I went down to 600 later. (3 dots were not my idea !!! )

[vaxination]

ok, so it looks like i will have to take them down one by one. oh, btw, i can't use a radius block because of fretboard has a compound radius.

[soapbarstrat]

I seldom touch a fret-board with a radius block. I prefer a flat, long narrow metal and glass bar with sandpaper stuck to it, and that's what I used on this neck after the inlays were in, and the glue dried.

Fret-board has a 12" radius, which I kept, by working the flat leveler evenly from one side to the other (but sanding with the grain of the wood). If it would have been a multi-radius ("Compound" radius) I would have used the same leveling bar to keep the multi-radius.

[weaponepsilon]

I had the same prob with my finished LP neck and block pearloid inlays. Here's what I did. I took a radius block for the same radius and clamped it to a table with 100 grit sand paper and worked up to a 600 grit. I made a small "jig" if you will out of a scrap piece of wood about 3/4 in wide by 1/2 in thick and about six inches long. I cut out a shape of the inlay and wedged the blanks in place and sanded them against the clamped radius block ignoring the neck altogether. You could do something similar by simply drilling a very shallow hole and slipping them in. I also found out that it helps to have a regular flat sanding block handy. If you radius them just right but are still a touch thick, you can sand the backs with the finer grit to the thin them. It actually worked perfectly for me. Good luck man!