[harley_ray]

I would like to have some dots inlayed in my fret board..who does this and is it costly? thanks Ray...

[evileye]

If it's just dots your after, you might be better off just using stickers or something. To get them accually inlayed is a hard enough job...

[dadfad]

You can buy the pearl dots (www.stewmac.com or Elderly Instruments, a link on my profile page) in various sizes. You just carefully drill the board with a shallow hole and glue them in flush. They are fairly inexpensive (fifty cents apiece or so).

[adds]

You can buy the pearl dots (www.stewmac.com or Elderly Instruments, a link on my profile page) in various sizes. You just carefully drill the board with a shallow hole and glue them in flush. They are fairly inexpensive (fifty cents apiece or so).

Yeah its not difficult when your talking just dot as like John says you can buy them precut.It only gets difficult and expencive when you start want tree of life s*it all up the neck.

[pimp_vince]

ya the work they do at the martin, taylor, and gibson custom shops are amazing. those must take hours to get right.

[dadfad]

Nice inlay work is pretty difficult. It took me about eight hours and three tries to replace a broken abalone "Gi..." on the headstock of my vintage Gibson ES-175. Since then I've gotten better, but it's still not that easy. (Dots being an exception) But there are now decent books and supplies (including "pre-cuts") available for anyone who wants to really get into it.

[capo2nd]

I have nice lightning shaped inlays on my elecrto acoustic.

[adds]

Nice inlay work is pretty difficult. It took me about eight hours and three tries to replace a broken abalone "Gi..." on the headstock of my vintage Gibson ES-175. Since then I've gotten better, but it's still not that easy. (Dots being an exception) But there are now decent books and supplies (including "pre-cuts") available for anyone who wants to really get into it.

You can also get little cutters now that will go in a dremal with a small routerbase.The cutter is specialy designed for cutting MOP ect.So no more pissing about with a jewlers saw.

[dadfad]

That would help quite a bit. I kept cracking it with the jewler's saw (abalone is extremely fragile). I finally did it by gluing the abalone to a thin piece of wood (with water soluable wood glue), sawing out the design and then letting it soak in water until the two pieces separated. I've found out since that this is not an uncommon way of doing detailed inlay-cutting at all.

[adds]

That would help quite a bit. I kept cracking it with the jewler's saw (abalone is extremely fragile). I finally did it by gluing the abalone to a thin piece of wood (with water soluable wood glue), sawing out the design and then letting it soak in water until the two pieces separated. I've found out since that this is not an uncommon way of doing detailed inlay-cutting at all.

Yes you still do that with the dremal.Makes it alot easier.Sod cutting it with no board especialy with a jewlers saw.What the hell were you thinking of you madman.It must have been a right bastard.

[dadfad]

Yes, I had a little piece of wood with a small hole in it to support the abalone (like a miniature ban-saw table sort of) but it didn't work (cracked on the up-stroke twice) until I glued it. Now I know!


Maybe thirty years ago (when I didn't have a clue in the world where or how to get mother-of-pearl or abaloney even (let alone pre-cut dots), I needed to remove the neck on one of my National Steels. One of the screw-heads holding the neck to the metal body was directly under an inlay dot and so I had no choice but to crack it out to get to the screw. After I adjusted the neck, I didn't know what to do about the dot (which luckily was 1/4" diameter). I bought a bottle of women's finger-nail polish in a pearl-color that matched the dot color, spilled it onto a sheet of paper, let it dry solid, then used a 1/4" paper hole-punch to punch out a dot (plus a couple of extras). It fit the hole perfectly. I just glued it in. It's still there to this day and still looks perfect!

[squeezebox]

if i were you id draw my own inlays...