Hello World! My first guitar project

[Bakersdozen]

That looks killer for a first attempt! Great stuff.

[DarkMark]

I remember someone posting that sometimes mop inlays break and are still used. Having read that I had a close look at my Ibanez headstock, and what did you think I found?…
Don’t feel bad about breaking the inlay and repairing it, it obviously happens to the best of us.

[Bakersdozen]

I remember someone posting that sometimes mop inlays break and are still used. Having read that I had a close look at my Ibanez headstock, and what did you think I found?…
Don’t feel bad about breaking the inlay and repairing it, it obviously happens to the best of us.

Found a crack?

[Simon Barden]

Six tuners?

[DarkMark]

Both correct!
This is a bad angle. On a different angle you don’t see it.

[Bakersdozen]

Both correct!
This is a bad angle. On a different angle you don’t see it.

Haha touche

[ross.pearson]

Cheers guys! I'm fairly happy with the inlay portion of the job, but we'll see how I do with the inlaying part of the job, that has been a bit of a pain so far.

I remember someone posting that sometimes mop inlays break and are still used. Having read that I had a close look at my Ibanez headstock, and what did you think I found?…
Don’t feel bad about breaking the inlay and repairing it, it obviously happens to the best of us.

Cheers! I'm definitely taking the broken sections in stride, it's all part of the learning process, and to be honest if it was perfect it probably wouldn't fit the overall aesthetic. =)

The time has come to embed the inlays. First thing I did was lay everything back out on some painters masking tape.



Then I covered the section of headstock I was inlaying with tape, and superglued my layout down to it.



From there, simply cut around and remove the sections.



I tried to go in deep enough that I could remove the entire setup from the neck and have a good enough "scratched" guide for carving, but it's not super easy to see what's going on to be honest.

I'll upload more images tomorrow. I had a bunch of competing demands today, so wasn't able to get much done on this. I'm up to 13 coats of poly on the body though.

EDIT: If you're wondering about the inlay placement, it's because I carved a "scallop" into the entire bottom section of the headstock. I'm aware the string trees will probably be right in the inlay. It's okay..

[McCreed]

Looking good Ross.
I've never done any inlay, but your process looks logical and practical to me!

[ross.pearson]

The plan of using the scalpels to transfer layout lines didn't work as well as I'd hoped. You can see them, but it's pretty tough to work with.



I ended up using a mechanical pencil to draw in the outlines. I think that's going to give me better results.



Working with scalpels isn't too hard, it's definitely more forgiving and less prone to making catastrophic mistakes. It's really slow going though. Just doing the "I" has taken some time and it's still not 100% correct. I've got a couple dremels sitting around, I might test out some engraving bits to see if I can freehand without too much problem. On scrap wood, of course.

[ross.pearson]

Looking good Ross.
I've never done any inlay, but your process looks logical and practical to me!

Thanks! Hopefully this at least helps someone else avoid the same mistakes I'm making. Well, not really "mistakes" so much as not the best process/method choices.