TravisW
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2011
- Messages
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Okay, I first came here looking for some Les Paul templates, because I had an idea about a guitar I wanted to build. It's not a Les Paul, certainly not a 59 clone by any stretch of the imagination...but it's going to be Les Paul shaped. I've been out of work for quite a while, so scraping together money has been a long job. That said, I was finally able to get started on the fingerboard.
Stewmac Fender scale compound radius Ebony fingerboard. Flame maple inlays cut and laid out on top (not straight, either)
LooseInlays by TravisWoyen, on Flickr
Inlays inlaid. This was a stupid pain in the ass, and I would never do flame maple inlays this way again. The inlays themselves were a bit under 1/8" thick before I shaved them down, then coated several times with thin CA glue. The idea was to build up enough CA so that I could sand down level. The issue is that if you sand through the CA layer, which is incredibly thin, you drag ebony straight into the grain of the maple, thus making a "dirty maple" look, which runs counter to the idea of sealing the maple with thin CA glue. If I were to do it again, I would flood a thin flame maple veneer with clear casting polyurethane, leaving enough thickness so that sand-through would not be an issue.
Oh yeah, I cut in the inlays with a razor blade and a cheap 1/4" chisel. I used some of my son's sidewalk chalk to mark the etching (it's apparently good for something other than drawing Thomas the Tank Engine all over the driveway).
inlaid2 by TravisWoyen, on Flickr
From there, I measured and cut the taper on my Eisenhower-era tablesaw (not pictured) using a sliding jig (also not pictured...it would break a camera) that looks like it was made by a drunk blind guy. Basically, it slides in the slot on the table, and the fingerboard was clamped to the top. From there, I glued on the binding (superglue for the most part, acetone to re-tack spots that pulled away. Scraping was accomplished with the aforementioned razor blade.
Bound1 by TravisWoyen, on Flickr
Stewmac Fender scale compound radius Ebony fingerboard. Flame maple inlays cut and laid out on top (not straight, either)

LooseInlays by TravisWoyen, on Flickr
Inlays inlaid. This was a stupid pain in the ass, and I would never do flame maple inlays this way again. The inlays themselves were a bit under 1/8" thick before I shaved them down, then coated several times with thin CA glue. The idea was to build up enough CA so that I could sand down level. The issue is that if you sand through the CA layer, which is incredibly thin, you drag ebony straight into the grain of the maple, thus making a "dirty maple" look, which runs counter to the idea of sealing the maple with thin CA glue. If I were to do it again, I would flood a thin flame maple veneer with clear casting polyurethane, leaving enough thickness so that sand-through would not be an issue.
Oh yeah, I cut in the inlays with a razor blade and a cheap 1/4" chisel. I used some of my son's sidewalk chalk to mark the etching (it's apparently good for something other than drawing Thomas the Tank Engine all over the driveway).

inlaid2 by TravisWoyen, on Flickr
From there, I measured and cut the taper on my Eisenhower-era tablesaw (not pictured) using a sliding jig (also not pictured...it would break a camera) that looks like it was made by a drunk blind guy. Basically, it slides in the slot on the table, and the fingerboard was clamped to the top. From there, I glued on the binding (superglue for the most part, acetone to re-tack spots that pulled away. Scraping was accomplished with the aforementioned razor blade.

Bound1 by TravisWoyen, on Flickr