Acoustic Guitar Construction

Hey, guys

Several times I made inlay in a maple headstock. Still, I'm not capable to make the routing impecable. So there are little gaps between the MOP and the maple. I tried several things to match the color of filling (wood with AR-glue, white glue, CA-glue and epoxy), but they all turned out too dark.

Any tips? Does Larry Robertson refer to the issue?

Thanks
Herman

I have used Minwax bending pencils, but it is a wax and there is a chance the top coat will fail over time. The best fix are these
http://www.constantines.com/browseprodu ... ticks.HTML or a similar product.

You need a "melt in knife/spatula", an alcohol lamp and putty knife will work. When using either material I always use more than one color mixed to a marble swirl. That way it looks far more natural, test a little, you'll be surprised how invisible the fill can be.

Thanks Ken, didn't think of this solution. I'll buy me a set on Ebay here. I'll let you know how this works out.
Herman

Today they delivered the Liberon shellac sticks. Three colors, 10 bucks, shipping included.
It works really easy. Got to develop routine on this. Here is a pic how it is now, far from perfect, but much better than before. At close range it is still visable, but from 3 feet quite nice.

It looks very good to me. I'll have to pick up a few of those sticks.

After I glued my fretboard to the neck I noticed that there was a small gap between the maple binding and the maple neck down on the nut end. I took a piece of coarse sandpaper to a piece of scrap maple to make a small pile of dust. I added a couple of drops of Zpoxy to make a paste. I worked the paste into the gap from all angles with a small piece of scrap binding beveled on the end. I scraped off the excess and after letting it dry for a couple of hours I sanded it. The gap is undetectable.

Also, I cracked the ebony headplate because I’m stupid. I did the same process with ebony. I know exactly where the crack is,,, or I should say was and I can't see it at all. Same thing was done to clean up the inlay pockets on the same headstock and once again undetectable.



The crack is left of the star and runs from the nut location to a little over halfway up towards the star.



George

Ebony is fantastic to fill. I wish all woods were as easy to hide mistakes in. I was using a three sided file to bevel the edges of my fret slots and didn't notice the file was not in the slot for the whole width of the board at the second fret. I made a nice gouge in the fret board that the fret would not cover. Filled it with some dust and CA, leveled it out and it is now completely gone.