Any luthiers? How is this inlay on this guitar headstock done?

[G50]

This is a custom inlay on a headstock on a PRS, done by an artist.

You can see the baby blue color of the stock headstock.

I think what they did was get a very thin piece of wood veneer, somehow inlaid the mother of pearl design, and stuck (glued) the piece on the headstock.

How do you think this was done?

I want to try to replicate it, if not exactly, something similar.

I bought some very thin wood veneer (.040" I think - it's like really thin cardboard, or a milk carton). And some mother of pearl veneer that's even thinner (thinner than a business card).

With these materials, I can't see how he did this. The wood and mother of pearl are so brittle. Plus, there is a lot of fine detail here. How did he inlay it so cleanly? This fit on this size couldn't have possibly been done by an xacto knife.

Any thoughts on how to accomplish this?

[Nostril Cheese]

STEWMAC.COM : Tools and supplies for: Inlay, pearl cutting

Here you go. It's complex work and takes years of practice to perfect.

[HardDrive]

A Luthier? Nay. I am a Shrubber.

[slodave]

Here ya go:

1959 Les Paul guitar build...

The inlay I used was about a 1/16" or so. I used the Dremel to route the almost about 3/4 of that into the headstock. I had to make a custom router bit for the Dremel out of a regular drill bit, as the normal Dremel bit was too wide and I could not get into the tight spaces. Anything that that was thinner that my custom bit was done by hand with a knife designed for this. You can see it in these pix:
1959 Les Paul guitar build...

And if you want to see the whole thing from start to finish:
1959 Les Paul guitar build...

[slodave]

Any update on this or did you give up?

BTW, the "blue" you referred to is not the headstock, but the binding.

[G50]

Being too impatient to put in years of practice, I put in a couple weeks and came up with this copy. I used super thin mother of pearl, wood veneer, clear varnish.

It took me a couple of failed attempts. I learned a lot, I may redo it again if I get the energy, but it's not bad. Was fun, but took me at least 15 hours, if not more.

The picture isn't great, it looks better in person.



Original guitar owned by Tim Mahoney of 311 is below





How my headstock looked originally:



My copy

[jwgn777]

[ckissick]

The easiest way to do mother of pearl inlay is to rout out the shape as close as possible with a dremel. But it does not have to be perfect by any means, if you know a trick. You rout out the wood, glue the inlay in, then the trick.

Save a bag of very fine sandpaper shavings (powder, actually) from the headstock, so the color matches. Pour the powder in the gap between the inlay and the wood, then drop super glue on the powder. It bubbles up and flows over the inlay and looks awful. But it gets very hard, and you sand it down so it's all flush and cleaned up. Et voila! See for yourself, on an F5 mandolin I built. It works great on ebony, not quite as good on wood with a grain pattern, but not bad.

[jwgn777]

Originally Posted by ckissick

The easiest way to do mother of pearl inlay is to rout out the shape as close as possible with a dremel. But it does not have to be perfect by any means, if you know a trick. You rout out the wood, glue the inlay in, then the trick.

Save a bag of very fine sandpaper shavings (powder, actually) from the headstock, so the color matches. Pour the powder in the gap between the inlay and the wood, then drop super glue on the powder. It bubbles up and flows over the inlay and looks awful. But it gets very hard, and you sand it down so it's all flush and cleaned up. Et voila! See for yourself, on an F5 mandolin I built. It works great on ebony, not quite as good on wood with a grain pattern, but not bad.

That is something close to what I would do.

[G50]

You guys obviously know what you're doing and have skills!

Could you do mine so it looks as professional as yours? What do you think it would cost?

[craigster59]

Women have some real talent doing inlays. Judy Treet:


Jimmi Wingert: