Inlay Practice Feedback

[SH9195]

Looking for feedback/guidance on the two practice inlay attempts in the attached pictures before I go live and try this on my new Warmoth guitar neck. Thanks in advance. There are some small gaps which I plan to fill with a mix of saw dust from the same wood and glue.

 

[DangerousR6]

Looks good to me, just use some of the left over wood material from the cut outs and grind it into dust and mix it with the glue to fill in the gaps... :icon_thumright:

 

[PhilHill]

Looks good so far. I would advise practicing on a piece of wood that has been rounded like the radius on a fingerboard. It does make a difference in the cutting. Good luck on it.  :icon_thumright:

 

[jay4321]

Not as good as it can be. Consider making templates and proof them before cutting into the fretboard.

Beyond that the #1 thing is your centerline and placement. A little gap to fill is small potatoes if that’s how it works out, but any one inlay the slightest bit out of alignment will be very obvious.

Fact: I’ve drilled two dots at the 13th fret by accident.

 

[SH9195]

Not as good as it can be. Consider making templates and proof them before cutting into the fretboard.

Beyond that the #1 thing is your centerline and placement. A little gap to fill is small potatoes if that’s how it works out, but any one inlay the slightest bit out of alignment will be very obvious.

Fact: I’ve drilled two dots at the 13th fret by accident.

Thanks for the feedback. Any particular material you use for the template? 1/4" MDF?

 

[docteurseb]

What others have said. It's a great start but I think you'll want to train more to reduce the gap and also get to a point where you feel perfectly confident you're not going to ruin your neck's fingerboard.

There are different levels of complexity too:
- flat piece of wood w/o frets: easy to sand flat/smooth
- fixed radius piece of wood: harder but still easy with a radiused block
- fixed radius with frets: lot more fun
- compound radius with frets: harder than fixed radius if done on an unfretted neck, no different on a fretted one.

Is your neck already fretted ? If so I would suggest maybe getting one of these horribly cheap neck knockoffs on eBay to practice on a garbage neck you don't care about. Got one for $20-$25 shipping included a year ago. Can't seem to find them that cheap now though. The thing was absolutely terrible for doing anything musical (frets not parallel to each other, etc) but fantastic for practicing inlays, veneering, etc...

Without forking for one of these you could probably use a radiused piece of wood and "simulate frets" by putting some piece of woods restricting the amount of space you have to sand those inlays flat (which is what you'll be forced to deal with on a real neck).