Slotting and Fretboard Inlays

Well, I actually did most of this work about two weeks ago, but have not been able to blog it until now. Since the two semi-hollowbodies and the solid body Telecaster are the only ones I am getting paid for, I have not been working on the other couple projects lately. I did the fret slot cutting using the templates, miter box, and fret saw I got from StewMac.com. This definately made things easier, except for the first few frets on the Telecaster style necks as the miter box is just barely wide enough to accomidate the headstock.



Before I radiused the fretboards, I did the inlays. This one is for the solid body Tele style guitar I am building with the Celtic/St. Patrick's Day theme. It is going to be stained emerald green and has abalone shamrocks instead of dot markers.



All three of the guitars I am spending most of my time on now are going to have gold fret wire, which I bought off of LMII.com. It went into this fretboard pretty easily, but it is supposed to be a little more difficult to level and crown the frets as it is a harder material than regular fretwire.


Here is the whole neck with all frets fretted and all inlays in. The cross on top is a green crystal (faux emerald) cross in gold from a necklace I bought off ebay. The dark stripe on the back of this neck is called a "skunk stripe" and it is made of walnut.



Here are the two rosewood fretboards I bought originally for the two Les Pauls, but only one is being used on the a Les Paul now. I will explain later. The next picture shows the fretboard with the fret slots cut and the inlays placed on top of the fretboard.



Here are the first three block inlays set into the inlay cavity. You can see the cavity for the fourth block and the actual inlay and the 12th fret fish inlay on the top of the picture. The next picture shows the Dremmel router attachment I have. I would like to get the one from StewMac.com, but that will have to wait as they don't sell anything for cheap and I don't have the extra money to buy one now.



Here is the completed fretboard. All inlays are glued in place and fret slots cut. The next picture shows the fretboard being glued to the neck (with green tape holding it in place). I have also glued on the ebony headstock veneer with the cross inlay.



Here is a closeup of the headstock being glued on with the inlay showing between the tape. I chose to do a different cross configuration than on my previous Les Paul (where it is leaning on the headstock) because the cross I purchased was not quite big enough to reach across the headstock. In the next two pictures, I have removed the tape from the neck and you can see the design of the headstock (the second picture shows the nut blank sitting on top of the fretboard).




Here are a couple pictures showing the neck sitting in the body. It is almost ready to be glued in, but it is easier to get all of the sanding done before they are glued than while they are still separate.



Lastly is my problem child. It is the neck for the semi-hollow Tele style guitar. It should have been very simple, but because the gold mother of pearl is just about the same color as the maple neck/fretboard, it became dificult. This guitar just has dot inlays plus the fish, so normally, I would just drill a small hole the same size as the dots, but to add some contrast, I decided to drill slightly over sized holes and use black super glue to glue in the dots to give it some contrast. Had this been an ebony or rosewood fretboard, this would not have been too much of a problem, but since it is maple, the black superglue wicked itself into the maple and left black streaks in the wood. The following two pictures are after sanding down considerably and there is still black shoing in the grain.



After rerouting and drilling the inlays, I thought using rosewood filler (sawdust mixed with glue) would work, but it did not turn out very well either. The dots did not stay centered when drying, so it just did not turn out the way I had envisioned it. I called my customer and asked what I should do. I thought either use abalone dots and fish inlays or use a darker fretboard like ebony or rosewood and keep the gold dots. It was decided that I would use a rosewood fretboard and gold dots/fish. That is why the other rosewood fretboard is not being used on the other Les Paul. Here are some pictures of my progress with the new fretboard. I ended up planing the maple fretboard off (it was a one piece neck, so I could not just remove the board). Here the fretboard is being glued on and waiting for inlays. I am still waiting for the inlays, so the fretboard is still flat and there is no fretwire installed. The last picture shows the back of the neck where I put in a maple "skunk stripe" instead of the walnut, per the customer's request.




I have more pictures to up load, but I will use them on my next post. I spent most of today carving the necks. Well, that is it for now, please let me know what you think. Thank you, I hope you enjoy watching the progress of my guitars.

Aaron