INLAY DAY
Pearl Inlay on Ebony Fretboard
Today I would like to lay down some thoughts about inlay. I am at my bench for 10-12 hrs. a day lately and have two builds going at the same time; both an octave mandolin out of Maple and Spruce, and a concert ukulele out of Koa and ‘Toona (Austaralian red Cedar). They are so similar in many ways, but so very different in others. What they will have in common will be Inlay, and my client Debra soon must decide how much of that shiny pearl she would like to see on her concert sized uke. Almost certainly she will go for the inlay dots on the side of the fretboard for the player’s benefit; most every instrument has it. It helps experienced players to hone in on where they should be as they progress up and down the fretboard while playing. They are lost without it. What they rarely need is the other, much more commonly seen, set of dots, squares, or sea turtles on the face of the fretboard, laying low in between the frets, purely for decoration. You see less and less of that, it seems, as time goes by. An average modern ukulele has a few quater inch dots as fretboard decoration.
It used to be that every guitar like instrument had those fret dots (or some kind of marker) at all of the appropriate frets… 3,5,7,10, 12… but lately you see bare wood more and more often. That seems to be a reflection of the fact that a good player will rarely be looking at the face of the instrument while playing, it is almost impossible. He or she will have to use the second set of markers inlaid into the bass side of the fretboard, visible from above. For my octave mando, I chose to use large rectangles of MOP (mother of pearl) on the face of the fretboard. I wanted some bling, some pop!, to offset what could have ended up as a somewhat bland and blonde instrument. The back, sides and neck are made of curly Maple, and the Soundboard is Sitka spruce; now that is a lot of white wood! So as a designer, what might you do to offset it? How about an Ebony jet black fretboard with as much shiny and interesting pearl as you can fit between the frets, and then draw your eye up to the headstock? That should be a good start.
The roots of inlay lie very deep in the dust of antiquity. It has been around almost as long as men themselves. It’s easy to imagine a primitive man that has found some bauble of bling and forced it into a knothole of his spear shaft for everyone to enjoy, and to mark it as his, and to signify that Grog appreciates fine objects. Nowadays, our fine objects are sporting inlay like never before. Sometimes it seems overwhelming. With modern CNC machines and techniques, it has become commonplace to manufacture in moments what used to take years to fabricate by hand. And the accuracy of the cuts is simply astounding. Precision has never been better. Sourcing the pearl is easier than ever. If the inlay looks absolutely perfect, chances are great that a robot made it, and the person simply assembled it and glued it in. I have yet to use those techniques; I do it the same way that it has been done for centuries… by hand.
First, one needs a plan. Like the rectangles on my Ocave. The plan was to fill it up and show it off. I decided that since the fretboard is tapered, the third fret would have the largest inlay, and the 18th would be much smaller, but wider. I laid down some blue painter’s tape and got started. I made lines nearer the edges to mark off where it would stay natural, deciding that 8mm of black down both sides at the edges would do a lot to ground the subject. Then I marked off the horizontal to within 4.5mm of the fret cuts of fret #2 and 4. I could then slice out that piece of blue tape, stick it to a piece of interesting pearl, and plan out #5 inlay dot. Sticking with my side parameters of 8mm throughout, I only had to decide to make my horizontals a little smaller as I went down the board. For #5, I went with 4mm of black above and below the fret cuts. On #7, I left only 3.5mm. then less and less each time until on #15, the horizontals were only 1.5mm above and below the fret slots… a much longer and leaner rectangle than at #3 when we started. Hopefully, that encourages the eye to move about and makes the fretboard much more interesting than a monotone backdrop.
At this point I had seven, maybe eight blue rectangles missing out of the blue background of the taped over fretboard and those same pieces taped to the positives that were waiting to be installed. I chose to make them wait; I like to do my negative pockets first. No harm done yet, I could back out at any time, but after approval it’s time to fire up a miniature router or two and attack those negatives, removing all to a depth equal to the thickness of the pearl itself. I use every trick to make the lines clean and straight, and then clean out the corners using my best optics and very sharp tools. After each one, I sized up the pearl to match the pocket, and carefully reduced it until it fit. Tedious, but easy enough. A few hours later, all the rectangles are in place and glued in with superglue. If I made the pearl too small, that same superglue combined with extra fine sawdust will fill the vacancy, and the sanding begins. Remembering that pearl dust is toxic, good ventilation and high quality dust masks are essential. Soon, the board is as flat as can be, sanded down to 1000 grit, and the pearl is beaming against a black backdrop. Installing the frets would follow, then the entire neck could be shaped, ready for the next step.
This is inlay at it’s simplest form, perhaps. Not quite as easy as for Mr. Grog, but it gets infinitely more difficult as you get into mosaic - like inlays made by famous artists like Larry Robinson. Curved lines are much harder. Shared borders make mating the pieces exponentially more difficult to do well, and the many colors and textures of pearl give the artist immense freedom. But whether you choose to make an amazing inlay of a Tamil Tiger with it’s stripes and bare teeth glowing in your best pearl, or the simple ornamentation of a fretboard, the techniques and tools are all the same. Negative pockets and positives to fill them, simple platforms to saw the pearl pieces on, simple saws with extra fine teeth, pushed by hand motions… the artist becomes the saw, becomes the inlay; the inlay comes to life. It’s not for everyone. It’s not for every instrument. But in the right place (usually where you make a mistake), and with the right tools, choices, and techniques, it can be the small part of the entire build that sets your work apart from the rest. And it is worth every moment of effort. Best Wishes, Raven
