First fretboard inlay

[JKHamby]

First build, first fretboard. I don't know if these are ok or not.

I kinda think that if I am asking the question in my head, I won't be happy with them in the end and the fretboard isn't expensive to start over.

But, I know I don't have particular expertise so I could be obsessing over nothing.

Competing narratives in my head. So, I thought I would take the question to experts.

Would you roll with it or start over?

 

[nuance97]

The originals are kinda gappy so it looks good enough. Pack some rosewood dust in the gaps and drop some thin superglue on the dust to lock it in place and sand flat

 

[fatdaddypreacher]

^^^this. you will be surprised how little you will notice this as the build progresses. the filling as described above will do wonders for it, as the contrast is greater now to you because it is all you are focusing on. pay attention to other factory builds and you will see quite a bit of that. I'd say carry on, young soldier. that should make a nice looking board. where is the rest of the build...no holding out on us

 

[DaveR]

I think those gaps are small enough to fill. Mixing sawdust and your glue of choice is good advice. The gap will likely be a little darker than the surrounding wood so you gotta decide if you can live with that, but the board will also darken considerably with oiling. I think you’ll be fine.

I’ve used CA and sawdust for fixing chips. I prefer Zpoxy mixed with sawdust for seating inlays as I have a long open time and it squeezes out all around and fills the gaps at the same time. But if they’re already glued down on yours, CA and sawdust might be a better choice to just fill in gaps.

 

[fatdaddypreacher]

and when we say sawdust in this manner, we ain't talking about table saw variety. clean you off a flat area and lay some paper down and make some fine dust with fine sandpaper from the scraps from your fretboard if available. If not, i keep an assortment of india ink on hand and color mix some epoxy and fill with that. your board is a bit trickier since it has multicolored striping in it, but you can go for a mix that best mimicks the board if you have to go that route

 

[JKHamby]

^^^this. you will be surprised how little you will notice this as the build progresses. the filling as described above will do wonders for it, as the contrast is greater now to you because it is all you are focusing on. pay attention to other factory builds and you will see quite a bit of that. I'd say carry on, young soldier. that should make a nice looking board. where is the rest of the build...no holding out on us

Definitely not young, I just didn't get into guitar until my middlish 40s.

Here are some pics of the build. It's been going on for 2 years with a long break because of intensely full family calendars. There are definitely problems but none that I think are show stoppers.

^^^this. you will be surprised how little you will notice this as the build progresses. the filling as described above will do wonders for it, as the contrast is greater now to you because it is all you are focusing on. pay attention to other factory builds and you will see quite a bit of that. I'd say carry on, young soldier. that should make a nice looking board. where is the rest of the build...no holding out on us

Project is two yrs old. Long hiatus but coming back. Had an issue with the maple top that twisted slightly while waiting to be glued. I did the best I could to not lose it but it wasn't a perfect mate to the top. Don't know if it will be an issue or not. But it was too pretty to abandon.

 

[fatdaddypreacher]

nice piece of maple indeed....and i didn't build my first til i was 60...that was 9 years ago.. welcome back. looks great

 

[JKHamby]

Follow up: I have seen reference to using acetone, expoxy, model airplane glue for inlays.

What do you all use and what drove your choice? I have saved a fair amount of dust from the fretboard for coloring the glue.

thanks,

 

[nuance97]

I use thick superglue. It’s easy to control. I tried acetone once, and it kinda melted the edges, and made the inlays look weird. Won’t do that again

 

[DaveR]

At the time I was researching, I had seen many around here use epoxy, and I believe that's how Freddy did it in his LP build youtube videos, which are a fantastic resource.

My inlays were real MOP. So I don't think acetone would be suitable there. Acetone does melt many plastics and can be useful when attaching binding. I've never worked with plastic inlays, but I'd be worried about them deforming from Acetone. Especially since you have some gaps to fill on the edges. I have used acetone to melt binding scraps into a paste (known around here as "goop") and spread it on to attach binding.

I like the longer working time of epoxy. I also liked that I can mix in sawdust while blending together the two parts of the epoxy and get the color I want. With CA, you would just put glue in a crack and pack some dust in. Not a lot of working time with CA.

For my shell fretboard inlays, I cut the pockets to be a snug fit, then spread a thin layer of epoxy in the pocket, and pushed the inlay down in it until it squeezed out all around. Once hardened, I used a single cut mill file to remove most of the epoxy before switching to a radius sanding block until all traces of epoxy were removed.

For my headstock inlays (also real shell) I did things slightly differently. I cut an oversized pocket around the inlay, which would require the inlay itself to be perfectly centered. I placed the shell inlay exactly where I wanted it and added a couple drops of thin CA just to tack it down. Then I flooded the whole thing with epoxy that I had tinted black with crushed up match sticks and India ink.

 

[LtDave32]

For my shell fretboard inlays, I cut the pockets to be a snug fit, then spread a thin layer of epoxy in the pocket, and pushed the inlay down in it until it squeezed out all around. Once hardened, I used a single cut mill file to remove most of the epoxy before switching to a radius sanding block until all traces of epoxy were removed.

^--------- This is the way to do it, for a clean and gap-less inlay job.

Much, much better than gluing the inlay down and trying to back-fill around it.

 

[DaveR]

I recently did some dot inlays by floating in epoxy too. Not sure if it was necessary, because the drilled holes were a really good fit, but they turned out pretty perfect.

This is the headstock inlay that I had to tack down the shell and then back fill on. I wanted the black to be nice and even all the way around. Funny I can see the imperfections in this photo but my eyeballs don’t see them in person.