Has anyone INLAYED a WENGE HEADSTOCK?

[Surtur]

Hi,
I have a neck with WENGE  headstock, since it's a very hard wood, is that so difficult to rout it for inlay??
Is there anybody with that experience?

 

[bagman67]

I have no experience in this field, but I do know that many people are allergic to wenge, so you'll probably want to use a respirator if you're gonna be generating wenge sawdust or sanding residue, especially if you'll be doing close work.

Have fun!

 

[line6man]

Wenge is not a hard wood at all.

 

[jackthehack]

Can't remember if it was on here, or the older version of the unofficial warmoth board, but I remember somebody having that done to a wenge neck before, use the search feature and look for inlay

 

[reinhold]

I built a wenge neck and routed out a strip for the truss rod, so I'd say inlay is indeed possible if you're careful.  I used templates and would highly recommend making a template to use when routing.  If you hit it just wrong it could splinter and tear a chunk because of the nature of the wood.  Move the router slowly and steady but keep your router bit moving fast.  I used a brand new bit and it even had some trouble with it, so take very small amounts off at a time. 

 

[Cagey]

Wenge is not a hard wood at all.

Everything is relative, of course, but I don't know if I'd say that. It's much harder than hard maple, oak, mahogany or walnut, for instance. But, it's not as hard as goncalo alves, ebony, kingwood or an 18 year old male when the alarm goes off in the morning <grin>

 

[Surtur]

Haha

Okay, thanks for the replies. Will see tomorrow how hard this shit is. I have two headstocks to inlay, mahagony and wenge.

 

[bbl4ck]

Wenge is not a hard wood at all.

Everything is relative, of course, but I don't know if I'd say that. It's much harder than hard maple, oak, mahogany or walnut, for instance. But, it's not as hard as goncalo alves, ebony, kingwood or an 18 year old male when the alarm goes off in the morning <grin>

I accidently stuck the headstock of my winge neck on Valentina into a moving ceiling fan. 
It barely even left a mark on the headstock, but did put a big ding in the ceiling fan blade.
Is that hard  :dontknow:

 

[line6man]

Wenge is not a hard wood at all.

Everything is relative, of course, but I don't know if I'd say that. It's much harder than hard maple, oak, mahogany or walnut, for instance. But, it's not as hard as goncalo alves, ebony, kingwood or an 18 year old male when the alarm goes off in the morning <grin>

I accidently stuck the headstock of my winge neck on Valentina into a moving ceiling fan. 
It barely even left a mark on the headstock, but did put a big ding in the ceiling fan blade.
Is that hard  :dontknow:

It's a hard wood, for sure, but certainly not "very hard," or difficult to work with. Aside from the splitting, Wenge works well. It's nothing like dealing with something like Ebony or Bloodwood.

Also, something that I have learned from pen turning is that some woods can be very hard, but with a structure that makes them very easy to work with, so I don't necessarily pay attention to hardness.