Part 8: What kind of sea urchin is that?

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Part 7: Day of Inlay - Part 1

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Since I was working on the inlay for another guitar (yes I have two going at once - three if you count the lapsteel) I decided to start with the neck inlay for this guitar prior to doing anything else.
To see "part 2" of my day of inlay go here.

I started working on the other one first and I can truly say that I am much more aware of the differences between porous and non-porous woods now. The other guitar is an acoustic and has a mahogany neck. My chisel which is reasonably sharp - cut through the mahogany pretty well. There were some mistakes (as I'm still new to this) but for the most part - it went well. Man o' man was the maple on this neck harder to work with. This was both good and bad. The chisel didn't tear through this (by the way - I used no hammer or mallet with this chisel - just my hands).

Me + chisel + hammer = mass destruction

The chisel took off tiny slivers at a time. This was good though - because it made me take my time. It was bad because it required me to use more force than I would have liked. Time and sharper chisels will help this but because of my inexperience the fit is not as tight as I'd like - especially around the coin. The acoustic came out better - but that had more to do with having the right sized bit for the coin inlay...





Because I didn't shoot the process - here it is...

Strip of inlay:
1) Rough placed the strip of inlay material on headstock.
2) Used calipers (I love these things) to identify absolute center/position of inlay
3) Mark off position with a pencil (remove bit of inlay)
4) tape off line with painters tape
5) score the line with a razor (to a depth of about 1/64 inch)
6) use chisel to carve out wood
7) use chisel on headstock and sandpaper on inlay to make a snug fit.
8) dryfit/sand/chisel until satisfied with fit
9) glue inlay onto headstock
10) clamp with cauls and vice grips
11) wait (about 2 or 3 hours)

Coin inlay:
Same as above except no painters tape and the first pass is done with a forsner bit. In this case the bit was too small - so I enlarged it with the chisel (using it as a scraper). You can see my result (so-so). But I have yet to find a drill bit that is the exact size of a 1970 Irish 5 pence piece - so I sense some practice in my future.

Part 6: It's all coming together as planned...

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The neck arrived (about bloody time). And it's a beauty. It was worth the wait. I can say that - because I didn't really have that much time to work on this anyway. So, no harm - no foul. Still, the next time I order a neck (if I ever do again) I'll build in a 6 week buffer.

So, what did I do as soon as the neck arrived? Did I go straight to work and start prepping the body to receive it? Of curse not. I got all my blocks out and layed them out to look at them of course...

What you are looking at is what I *hope* the finished product will look like. Nothing in these pictures is final. This is all pre-visualization. But you get the idea. The pickups will go about where they are. The knobs and switches - the same. What you can't see is the cocobolo binding that I have been playing with. There is a scrap of it on the table. The binding will go all the way around the top (hiding the seam where the top and the body meet).

The upside of pre-visualization is that it gets me excited about the project. So, the next day I went to work on it. Starting with that headstock...