Going to try and swap out fingerboard dots myself

[jay4321]

My two strats have inlays that don't work for the guitars they're on. One has clay dots and the other abalone, and I want to switch them out for MoP. One board is jet black ebony and the other indian rosewood... I'd prefer not to screw anything up so any help would be appreciated.

So I'm going to drill a small hole in the center of the dots, and then drive a small screw in, rock the thing back and forth a little to break the glue, and then pull out the old inlay. From there I'll clean out the glue. Then, taking [some kind of epoxy] I'm going to put [some amount of] epoxy in the hole and drop the new .25" MoP dots in. I guess from there I let them dry and everything works out wonderfully in the end.

Sounds WAY too easy. Please tell me what's wrong with/missing from my plan. Thanks.

 

[jay4321]

And switching necks on these guitars is not an option.

 

[mayfly]

The biggest problem will be leveling the fingerboard after the new dots are in.  Usually you level the board with the frets removed so you can have at it with a sanding block - but that won't be possible here.  It's gonna be a PITA I'm afraid.

 

[blue313]

The biggest problem will be leveling the fingerboard after the new dots are in.  Usually you level the board with the frets removed so you can have at it with a sanding block - but that won't be possible here.  It's gonna be a PITA I'm afraid.

+1

The other issue here is the thickness of the original inlay vs the new ones.  Abalone is usually thinner and can be pretty chippy coming out.  You may have to drill the inlaid area a little deeper but it'll give you clean wood for a good glue joint.  Careful use of a soldering iron can also help vaporize the glue.

Youll also want to lightly clamp them in place to cure and then sand off the glue residue (another thing that's easier without frets).  Its actually very easy to do these quick and dirty, but they'll look it.  Take your time and it can be done, its just picky work.

 

[-CB-]

Check over on the les paul forum - they've done that there a few times, even changing traps out from plastic to aged plastic or vice versa, or to mop.

Leveling a large inlay is gonna be a real pain..... but a dot... I'm thinking it can be scraped and then spot standed using a sanding stick (see StewMac for those, they're GREAT).

 

[jay4321]

That's what I was thinking as far as the sanding stick.

This first neck is a Mighty Mite, which plays really well, but if goof on this one I can live with it. Needs neck shaping, a replacement for the plastic nut, decal, and really a proper finish as it only has a very light nitro. It's the neck with jet black ebony with abalone dots.

I'm not 100% clear on the application of the epoxy or which to use. Stewmac has a pitch black kind, which makes the most sense for a jet black board to me, but I've seen people online using a lot of different glues for this. Would I just put a little glue in, insert the inlay, and then let it dry?

 

[ocguy106]

I always thought MOP was abolone am I wrong.

 

[Who?]

Different types of the same stuff. 

 

[-CB-]

I always thought MOP was abolone am I wrong.

I always thought abalone was something you put in your sandwich, sorta like a knackwurst on steriods.......

 

[stubhead]

This is going to be really hard to get to come out right, unless you have a lot of patience and a jeweler's accuracy. And days to spend... look real carefully at an existing neck - see how the curvature of each dot is matched to the curvature of the fingerboard? They did that when there were no frets on it. Now think - would you be happy with dots that weren't curved? How are you planning to grind shell till curved, and not scratch wood? Etc? I'm not saying it can't be done - in fact, even I could probably do it, with a week's time - but I wouldn't. You'd be better off solving world peace, or learning Paganini's 16th Caprice or something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inA6AUSfGBY&feature=related

 

[ByteFrenzy]

It's not all that hard, actually. The really important thing is to glue the new dots in so that they're not too deep. They have to be just slightly higher than the fretboard wood at the lowest point - you don't want them recessed in any way. Then it's just a matter of very patient sanding. Use a sanding stick or wrap your sandpaper around a stick of suitable width. Since only the dots are touching the sandpaper, you wil quickly remove a lot of dot, so start with fine grit (600), go real slow and follow the fretboard contour. As soon as the sandpaper touches the fretboard surrounding the dots, it's time to switch to progressively finer grades of sandpaper. This is a neck with no dots, where I put two abalone dots at the 12th fret. The picture was taken before I lightly oiled the fretboard and you can see a slight color difference in the fretboard which only showed with flash.

 

[stubhead]

I would guess that by the time you clean out the holes, they'll be deeper than the dots are thick? Especially the ones that started out with clay. It might be risky to depend on the epoxy alone to "hold them up" as the epoxy is going to shrink slightly and settle a bit - then your dot is low, then you have to pull it, ack. If you're really dead-set on this, I would make sure I had extra dots, and glue the face of one to a small dowel so that you could evaluate the depth issue, hole-by-hole. I hope you have great eyes and/or magnification? To make sure that the dots stay high enough, some king of construction paper, business card etc could be cut out as a pad under each dot. As long as the paper is soaked though with the epoxy, it's still going to be solid mechanically. The sanding stick mentioned above would be a useful tool, I personally find that tiny flat files work best when I'm drop-filling and leveling finish dings, which is the closest thing I can think of to this that I've ever done. Or you could glue a single layer of sandpaper to hardwood sticks, your danger zone is in flex, and the extra, dangling abrasives...  Shells are harder than wood.

I do admire people with the ability, patience (& EYESIGHT) to do inlay work.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Sanding_Tools_and_Supplies/Fret_Dressing_Stick.html

IF you go slow enough and keep the dots high, it is actually essentially foolproof - level-sanding 20 li'l rocks, hmmmm. :laughing3:

 

[jay4321]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inA6AUSfGBY&feature=related

I remember having tone just like that. I know it's YouTube video quality and all, but I'd know it anywhere. Poor guy.