Inlay Completed – Almost

Hey, Welcome back. The other day I was working on some inlay for a clients guitar project. After lots of detailed routing, cutting, gluing and sanding, the inlay portion of the project is for the most part complete. There are a few spots that will require filling and some touch-up but that is the norm with any project I get into like this. This entire portion of the project took me the better part of 3 days to complete. This along with other small jobs and some repairs on the side-

Completed Inlay

There was only one small issue with the inlay set my client selected to be used. It was a bit short for this fingerboard, so I had to stretch the pattern a bit so the it’s coverage of the finger-board appeared balanced-

The next step will be to install this finger-board onto the neck-blank I made several days ago. I’m having to wait a day or so for the truss rod I’ve ordered for this project.

The T-Series project is still in the works. I’ve been adding a few seal coats while taking breaks from the inlay work. I still have a few coats to go.

When finishing a wood body, you need to seal the grain of the wood prior to applying your overcoats so the grain will not show in the finish. With this guitar, my client is requesting a translucent finish. So I need to use a clear sealer. What I’ve found works best for this application, (so far) is shellac.

Surface preparation is the key to any finish. Be sure to sand the surface perfectly smooth and flat prior to applying any finish or you will have to apply 50 coats. One of my building tricks is to apply thin nitro finishes. This allows the body to sing better as well as providing a perfect coat of lacquer to age gracefully-

Body Prep and Inlay Layout

Today I spent most of the morning working on the social media side of the business. Blog, Twitter and Facebook page maintenance as well as picking up a few new professional contacts on the music forums.

Then it was on to completing the final shaping and drilling of a custom T-Series I’m building for a local client. Once completed, I applied a bit of sealer and repeated the process until the surface was smooth. I needed to complete this project prior to getting into the inlay project. The inlay will take most of my shop time for the next few days so I need to keep the production flow going.

The first thing to do is layout the pattern. I already have the pieces cutout so that was a big time saver. Now I have to put this puzzle together.

After several hours of fiddling with pieces and trying different angles and rotations on the fingerboard, I finally have it-

All pieces in place, ready for tacking with some glue tomorrow

This is how I’ll end the day. I’ll get some more supplies together and setup the workspace. Now to answer some e-mail, setup an appointment or two and finish off the same way I start, catching up on the social media-

Welcome to my shop!

Hey, Thanks for stopping by the shop. What I’m going to do here is basically post a few paragraphs covering what I’m doing on that particular day in relation to my shop. What ever it may be.

Like today, I decided to write a blog about my daily dealings with having a guitar shop / business. How to grow that business and maybe even some specific information that may be useful to someone else out there trying to start a business too. I’ll also be stepping thru some of the processes I use either on the guitar or my marketing, sales, artistic development, recording, sound engineering, guitar photography or whatever.

This is going to be a learning process. I expect my postings to become more detailed and interesting as time goes on. Thanks for going along with me and please, don’t break anything!
For more info, see my website at – http://www.Casper-GT.com