My friend and I built a guitar, and I've been wanting to put inlays on it, but it seems like a complicated process and I don't want to fuck up the neck because that takes a LONG time to make. First off, is there anywhere I can go to have some abolone made for me into identical shapes and maybe something fancy for the 12th fret. And for the fun of it...what ORIGINAL looking inlay would you want on your guitar (taking suggestions)

Anyone with a link to the process or describing it would be very helpful

www.projectguitar.com
im not sure where but i KNOW they have it

edit: here it is http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/tutorial4.htm

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Are you prepaired to remove all the frets, re-radius the fretboard, route the inlay, cut the inlay material to size, insert the inlay into the route, re-radius fretboard, install new frets, crown and level the frets...

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Thanks guys



Well, I was hoping there was some place I could have the actual inlays made for me, but I'd be willing to do most of the other things (I'm just nervous about ruining the fretboard, it took sooooo long to get the neck just right )

Have you done it before BLS? Because a first hand experience is probably easier to relate to than a web page.

No I haven't done it and really dont plan on ever doing it. Alot more work is involved than you think, and I can guarentee that it wont turn out the way you want it to. Atleast not on the first try.

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Would you recommend just getting it professionally done?

I think I'll have a clean fretboard without inlays on mine.

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It looks kind of plain right now without anything. Its not painted, and it has no inlays

yep
if your really gonna do it though, take ALOT of time planning it all out check measurments and re-check em work really slow in it ect

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If you are gonna do it, i'd recommend using some off cuts of the fretboard to have a practise at trying to get the shapes correct in it. I'd recommend going for a design like the Les Paul inlays, because they're fairly big in comparison to others, and it'd be easier to use a small chisel to create the rectangular depression

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Thats a good idea

Clean fretboards are the shit.

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I hear that, although it has to be a nice neck/fretboard for it to look good otherwise it does look unfinished

You considered binding the neck white instead? That'd make it look a whole lot neater without the need to add inlays. As long as you've got the side markers, who needs inlays?

Guitar looks cool bro, nice shape to it

Agreed. An ebony fretboard with a white binding, with no inlays thats what my warmoth custom neck is gonna look like


binding an already made neck is pretty difficult, as said by my luthier; I've asked him about it. It would, obviously, require a re-fret and whatnot. What the luthier said it's really easy fuck up and mess the neck up, so it would just be easier to buy a new neck with a binding, rather than get a binding on an already made neck. I dont know though, he might just be saying this because he doesn't want to do all that work

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Its not my guitar in the pic but that thing about binding wasnt a bad idea at all!

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you COULD use some good stickers, I know it's not the same but it's really easy

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haha good one

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If you're mainly just looking to have the frets marked for ease of finding frets when playing, you can just stain the "marked" frets black. That way you won't have to deal with any major reconstruction and you can put a nice finish over the whole thing.

On my old beater guitar, I scalloped the frets a long time ago so the inlay dots were history at that point. I re-painted the neck black and then painted the marked frets silver (all silver, no designs). It holds up to a couple years of playing and then I re-paint them again.

I have position markers