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Please check this out. The offical warmoth site only shows the completed instrument but my best pictures were on the neck itself as I was applying clear coat layers of PolyUrethane. It was sunny the Sat I set the inlay, the next day Sun when I did the clear over the inlays it was a bit cloudier. These pics were taken with an iphone on Sun May 10th 2009. No body does abalone on maple. They like to do MOP and abalone on ebony because the black expoy fills in all the over routing spaces and you can't tell or see it on ebony. So because of this no one wants to chance it. But I took an expensive AAA Flame maple teleneck from Warmoth, had it custom fit with vintage stainless steel frets and left without any finish on it. It is a compund std C shape. I planned this out for about 6 months, gathered my tools, abalone shells, designs, custom alterations to the design. Then this May I got up my nerve knowing that I could destroy a beautiful neck and did the deed. Doing this work I had to work in micro, meaning everything was done under special bright lights, with a strong fan, and I had to wear a headset with manifying lenses on it. The drill bits for the Dremmel were so small that I would break them if I picked them up with my fingers. They were bits for routing computer circuit boards. I broke alot of them moving up to thicker and thicker bits until I found the right balance between thickness for strength and narrowness for routing accuracy. The dremel router was too big. I had to use the one sold by Stewmac. I practiced on 1/4' thick - 2.5'' by 8'' maple blanks I got for 1.89 at Woodcrafters. Practicing the routing on these until I knew how to route was an important step.Then when I did the actual neck, the frets were already in place. To practice on the small blanks of maple I had to cut a toothpick in half right down the center with a razor and use the two halves flat side down on the blanks to simulate the frets as I adjusted the router depth. I thought routing with the frets in place would be hard but once you get use to the magnification work style it was not hard at all. I did the inlay setting in the day under very hot bright sun with the magifier lenses. When you are working like this the entire fingerboard between individual frets is like a huge construction site for a new high rise building - because you are working with a microscope and everything you see, the routing site, is just huge, while in real life it is so small when you look at it. Check it. Not bad for my first every inlay job. I did the project like I would for a software job or a car engine rebuild or any other complex project - planning. But I did not expect to nail it on the first round. I expected to ruin the neck. But it turned out just fine by taking the time and attention to detail.
