ScottR Posted December 30, 2015 Report Share Posted December 30, 2015 On 12/23/2015 at 7:01 PM, sdshirtman said: Ya gotta be happy with that finish. Its beautiful. That appears to be approximately 3 feet deep........ SR 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a2k Posted December 31, 2015 Report Share Posted December 31, 2015 On October 15, 2015 at 9:33 AM, komodo said: I found my hard drive that had way more build pics from earlier stages of this build, many of these were from the inlay process. I'll drop those in here, just before we do the dye. 1. Cut everything from a pattern. 2. tack it onto the board and scribe around it. Rub chalk on that to fill, wipe it off and you have your routing lines. 3. Route those sections out, you can go outside the lines some. 4. Fit all the pieces, and pack ebony dust in the gaps 5. flood with thin CA. 6. Block sand to get everything flush to the board again, and presto. Easy. LOL The ebony dust trick is so cool it's not even funny. You would be hard pressed to see a line with the smallest loupe. I've got tons of questions about your inlay process... it looks fantastic. Any chance you can walk through it again for someone who has never attempted this before? Is this before or after radiusing the fretboard? What are you using to route out the sections? How deep do you go? How detailed/precise is your routing (does it follow the serrated edge along the dragon's torso)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted December 31, 2015 Report Share Posted December 31, 2015 If you have enough photography and the patience to write a short article, Komodo then it would be very useful. I'm split between so many priorities right now that inasmuch as I would love to do an inlaying article myself I simply can't spread myself too thinly....perhaps when I pick the pantograph back up.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
komodo Posted December 31, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 31, 2015 32 minutes ago, Prostheta said: If you have enough photography and the patience to write a short article, Komodo then it would be very useful. I'm split between so many priorities right now that inasmuch as I would love to do an inlaying article myself I simply can't spread myself too thinly....perhaps when I pick the pantograph back up.... I'm not sure if I had more than what I posted, but this winter I'm planning to do the large Cthulhu inlay. I will for sure document that, and that would be ideal for this. It might take me some time. I'm also building another neck right now for a body I had and I hadn't considered an inlay. Maybe I could cough one up for that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
komodo Posted December 31, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 31, 2015 7 hours ago, a2k said: I've got tons of questions about your inlay process... it looks fantastic. Any chance you can walk through it again for someone who has never attempted this before? Is this before or after radiusing the fretboard? What are you using to route out the sections? How deep do you go? How detailed/precise is your routing (does it follow the serrated edge along the dragon's torso)? Those are all great questions, and thanks for the compliment. The first thing I would recommend is to get the book The Art of Inlay by Larry Robinson. He has a couple videos too. He's a great teacher, very calm and methodical, with tons of experience. Radius: There is no set way to do it. Some people do it while the board is flat, some on finished guitars, It would depend a little on just how much radius you plan to end up with, as the sides get lowered potentially deeper than the inlay. The depth of your inlay material also matters. For myself, I've used sheets of pearl that are around .050" which is pretty typical. I like to do at least a half radius, meaning start the radius job and stop around 16". Then you have a chunk of it off, but it's not so curved that it's harder to work on. Really, even a 12" board shouldn't be that hard to follow. Just know that when you are done, you will finish the radiusing and be sanding both the fretboard and the inlay material. So, you won't be using a scraper or plane or whatever. Tool: Router of choice is either a Dremel with a base, or a Fordom flexshaft tool, also with a base. Those get expensive. I use a Dremel and made my own base from Plexi and bolts. I'll try to take a good pic of it today. The tip of a Dremel screws off and then you screw the base on. Once you set the depth, you probably won't touch it unless you switch to a different material. Depth: Ideally you want it flush. Then. whatever sanding you do is minimal. But, you have to watch out for places where maybe you got one area too deep, then you don't want to be sanding it all down to the deepest part. There is a trick around this though. If you inlay slightly proud it would leave a little room for error and for further radiusing but I like flush. Detail: The detail of the routing is really interesting. You could theoretically just route a big circle and drop in your inlay and fill in the gaps. The way you fill gaps is to use saved ebony powder (from the radiusing sanding), then flood it with thin CA. If you search around on the web, you can see where people have routed very wide around the inlay. You can see the fill pretty strongly, and you can do better than that. Using the smallest Dremel bit, used dental bits or my favorite, end mils. The Dremel bits are serviceable, though they tend to charge a lot for them. Dental bits can be found at any dentist, just ask them to save some for you and you should get a million. They are VERY small. You could probably find those on Ebay too. Carbide end mills come in tons of sizes, cut very nicely and you can get those on Ebay too. You might have to spend a little but they are worth it. Ebony seems like wood, but it's VERY hard! Route your area relatively close to the scribed line, but don't worry about the tiny details, Just go as small as you are comfortable with, and depending on what bits you have. If you accidentally cut an area too deep (I had a bot come loose and dive into the board once), then just fill the area with ebony dust and CA. You can create a small flat bed of dust to adjust the depth then flood with CA. Once it's all place you will pack in the edges, in all the details and flood it all. After sanding, you can see it pretty much wipes away all traces of the route and it blends in, It's like magic! Just yesterday I was radiusing a madagascar ebony fretboard. The dust gets into the fret slots and it looks like the wood grain blends together and the slots disappear, It's really insane. Try doing a small inlay, it's pretty satisfying. must have tools would be Dremel and bits, small jeweler's saw with REALLY thin blades, Freecut lube for that (critical), some kind of thing to cut the pearl on, and a scribe to trace around the inlay. A couple of good sites: http://dukeofpearl.comhttp://lmii.comhttp://www.inlay.com/inlay/pearl/pearl-1.html 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted December 31, 2015 Report Share Posted December 31, 2015 I have that book also. It was a kind gift to me from a dear friend who I miss very much. A very very cool book. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a2k Posted January 1, 2016 Report Share Posted January 1, 2016 Thanks for answering my questions in such detail! I'm going to come back and process this in more detail as I have a little inlay idea I want to try on my in-progress build. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
komodo Posted January 5, 2016 Author Report Share Posted January 5, 2016 Here's some more Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
komodo Posted December 4, 2018 Author Report Share Posted December 4, 2018 On 10/7/2015 at 11:34 PM, komodo said: A neck is born. Easily my favorite part of building and I don't know why. I know I'm not alone on this one. Usually, I'll work both sides at the same time and work the whole length (that's what she said), but this time I did one side, then flipped and did the other. For whatever reason it was even more enjoyable. I've also decided I will glue this in and finish it with the body. The grain is very open and needs filled. I can always sand back some for a satin finish, or whatever. Why has this resurfaced? When I made this I said I wasn't 100% sure of the wood, but fairly certain is was Panama / Yucatan Rosewood. After looking again, I'm 99% sure this is correct. https://www.wood-database.com/yucatan-rosewood/ It's a very interesting wood, It feels and works like Mahogany, has a similar weight (which is VERY different from any other Dalbergia), almost no oil (also VERY different), large and weird open grain but still interlocked and very stable. When I finished this build, I had left the neck somewhat oversized, I figured I'd play it and refine the profile later if I felt it needed it. It;'s actually had little use as I built a strat soon after that just plays AMAZING. Anyhoo, as I made the neck in my current build I thought I should revisit this and finish the profile as I had actually left it more like a baseball bat. I shaved a lot of wood off last night, and polished it up to an absolute killer of a neck. Working so much with the wood again made me dig this up to see what it was and here we are. You can't really tell neck profiles from pictures, but believe me, it went from a "oh that's nice" to a "WOW! that is a SEXY neck." She will get a lot more play from now on. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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