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Posts tagged inlay
Bailey custom acoustic from 40,000 year old Ancient Kauri
Jul 19th
A guitar made with the oldest workable wood in the world!
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
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- The soundboard is Ancient Kauri
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- Rosewood back and sides
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- Mother of pearl fret marker dots
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- Spalted Maple Rosette
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- Rosewood binding
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- Bailey Custom Bootlegger
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- Laminated neck
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- ‘Southern Cross’ headstock inlay
The Ancient Kauri Bailey Bootlegger Custom guitar is now finished and has already flown the nest. Sandy came to our ‘Guitar Sunday’ at The Firehouse to collect it. I used it to check the sound for the PA and ended up going through my entire repertoire of solo guitar pieces. I really didn’t want to stop playing it which is always a good sign.
I was surprised straight away after first stringing it up how even and well balanced it sounded, not to mention full and loud, but without being brash. A lovely rich warm mellow tone with each string as clear and well defined as the others. If there were guitars 40,000 years ago is this what they might have sounded like?
When I first plugged it into the tuner I was amazed how low the bass E string could be tuned and still sound great- most guitars lose it around low C or B but this one remained constant- it would be a wonderful guitar for altered tunings.
I have thoroughly enjoyed making this guitar. By a miracle of preservation in a peat bog this piece of wood has existed for many times longer than the whole of recorded human history. Touching, smelling, seeing and hearing (tasted pretty good too!) the Ancient Kauri during the build gave me a strange but direct link to a long forgotten past. I felt a little bit like I was waking it up from a very long sleep…kind of humbling to know how it lay silent for so long and now it sings…
Bailey custom acoustic from 40,000 year old Kauri-p4
May 16th
…Mother of Pearl ‘Southern Cross’ inlay…
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- Super glue and tweezers, mini router and cutters, scribe and scalpel, and a large chisel for prising off the peices
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- The mini spiral downcut router cutters leave a clean edge
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- The pieces are temporarily fixed in place for marking out
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- A scribe was used to score around the outline and the pieces are removed
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- A mini router is used to make the channel
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- A close up of the router in action
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- A 1/16″ cutter was used to rough it out first
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- After a second finer pass with a tiny 1/32″ cutter
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- A bit of work on the corners with a scalpel and they are ready for the inlays
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- Test fitting the inlays- they should drop in without any force
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- The inlays are glued with a paste made from epoxy and wood dust
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- After the glue is hard the inlay is sanded flat…it’s finished!
The guitar is now fretted and inlaid ready for finishing…
Sandy had mentioned some kind of Southern Cross inlay, so this is what I came up with. As luck would have it I had four of the stars left over from a previous project so only had to make the smallest one. I checked the relative brightness (magnitude) of each star to make sure I got them in the right place using the Wikipedia entry on The Southern Cross. Being from the Northern hemisphere I have never actually seen this constellation, so hopefully I can be forgiven for not knowing them by heart. I had to be slightly artistic with the exact placement to fit them around the tuners and logo, so please do not use this as a star map to navigate by or you may never be seen again!
How to make a star inlay-2/2
May 15th
Inlaying the star into the fretboard
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- The inlay was fixed in place with ordinary white glue for marking out
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- A scalpel was used to score all the way round- rubbing in light coloured dust shows up the shape
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- Fiona is routing the recess for the inlay to fit into
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- The inlay is fixed in permanently with black superglue
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- The inlay must be sanded flush to the fretboard surface
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- Finished- An inlay to be proud of, well done Fiona!
You may remember Fiona a while ago making her Star inlay on our ‘build your own’ course. If you are interested I wrote a full explanation of how to inlay mother of pearl a while ago. Although the shape is different we used exactly he same method.
Now it is finished, looking beautiful and the neck is ready for fretting. She will be back soon to continue working on the rest of her guitar….
Bailey custom one string bass- 4/7- making the neck
Mar 24th
A tip for inlaying into maple
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- Drilling the holes for the abalone dots
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- Left: no sealer, furry edges. Right: the wood is sealed first, crisp edges.
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- The hole is filled with super glue
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- The abalone dots are pressed in with a piece of scrap hardwood
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- Tools for installing the abalone dots
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- After the dot has been sanded
Sometimes when drilling into softer woods the edges of the hole can look a little rough. The wood can be torn by the drill as it enters, leaving a furry edge like in the second picture above.
To avoid this a coat of sealer is applied first and allowed to dry fully before drilling, resulting in a much crisper/cleaner hole. This would be true whatever style or technique was used to inlay the piece- it doesn’t need to be a round hole.
In this case 6mm abalone round dots were used and the same size drill to make the holes. The hole is filled with super glue and each dot gently pressed in with a scrap of hardwood. The inlay should stand just proud of the fretboard surface, so it can be sanded flush after the glue has dried.
When all the abalone dots had been glued in the fretboard was sprayed with matt lacquer. This must be fully dry before I can install the frets so that will be next week…Part 5
How to make a star inlay-1/2
Mar 18th
Ten piece, ‘five pointed star’- Abalone and Mother of Pearl
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- A jig for making the ten triangular pieces for the five pointed star
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- Each piece must have one straight edge to make the first side of the triangle, this sits against the side of the slot as it is being cut
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- A razor saw was used to cut the second side of the triangle…
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- Cutting the third side of the piece
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- The tiny triangle in the middle will become part of the inlay
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- The rubber tip of a pencil helps to hold the tiny pieces while they are cut
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- More pieces are cut to make up the design- five mother of pearl and five abalone
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- The finished inlay- The ten pieces are assembled on top of the paper pattern
The Idea
We recently had Fiona on our build your own acoustic guitar course and she had an idea for an inlay design for the 12th fret. I had to make a blog about this because we discovered a really easy way to make it look stunning and it only took about half an hour!
Her five pointed star design was drawn on a computer and printed out to use as a pattern.
We decided that the inlay would be made from ten triangular pieces – five each of abalone and mother of pearl to make up the star. Alternating them makes an almost 3D effect and is much more pleasing than if we made it from one large piece which might look a bit flat.
The problem was how to make ten identical triangles that would fit together perfectly to make up the desired shape. It’s not easy to do that if they are hand cut one by one but I was struck with a flash of inspiration which I wanted to share.
How it was done
I realised that using a mitre block which guided a saw to cut at the correct angles, the same shape could be cut repeatedly and accurately with ease.
Making the jig
I used a router and edge guide to make a shallow slot down the centre of a block of scrap maple. Then I cut the two angles into the block to guide the saw when making the actual inlay pieces. To find the angles I cut one of the small triangular pieces from the paper pattern. This was placed into the routed slot and used as a guide to make the two saw cuts . It only took about ten minutes to make and we found it really easy to use.
Using the jig
The inlay material must have one flat side which makes up the first and longest side of the triangle. This is easily sanded on with a flat block if necessary. The second and third side are cut by placing the inlay with the flat edge against the edge of the routed slot and running a modellers saw through the guide slots. We found that even very small offcuts of inlay material could be utilised by using the rubber end of a pencil to hold them firm. For consistency it is important that the pieces do not move between the first and second cut.
About 20 mins. later Fiona had made all the pieces and laid them out on the pattern to check they fit together OK (The original pattern was destroyed to make the jig so we printed it out again). It is now ready to be inlaid into the fretboard.
