For those thinking about inlay work

[Kitchen Guitars]

At Rockler I scored a 50 sample pack of 4"x8" laminated wood samples. ($43.00) Everything from Madagascar Ebony to Tulip wood. Also samples of things like rift sawn maple and quartersawn maple. They did that with a few species.
Its a lot easier to venture into inlay with stuff you can cut with a razor rather than sawing and thickness sanding Ablone!
Just an FYI!

[Neil K Walk]

Cool! I'll definitely hit them up next time I get a 20% coupon in the email.

[leftybanjo]

I just bought a package of 50 different woods at Woodcraft for 35.oo. Some beautiful burl samples, not laminated, very nice vineer. Range in size about 4x9"

[enalnitram]

thanks for the tip!

[Kitchen Guitars]

Oops, meant Veneer! Not laminate. Speaking of laminate; I rescued the Formica from a counter top. Thinkin' about making a Martin LX

[dekutree64]

I dunno, I've done some inlays in veneer, but prefer thicker wood now. Walnut burl veneer cut ok by razor knife, for use as a rosette background. But curly maple is too hard, and just splits instead of cutting. I ended up having to cut it by router. I guess it worked ok though. But then you have to be extremely precise in your routing depth, and careful of sanding through. Price is definitely an advantage.

On the other hand, using headplates and back/side scraps, you have to thin them down some, which is a pain. Or in other cases, I've inlaid 1/8" thick material into 1/16" or shallower pockets, so it's sticking way up, and then chisel/plane/scrape it down. Easier, I think.

Shell is the biggest pain of all though. Not only is it expensive, it comes in small pieces that are harder to hold onto than a hunk of wood, and the dust is much more dangerous. I always keep it wet while cutting, since I don't have a fancy vacuum system, and don't trust that to contain the dust as completely as water anyway, which prevents it ever fluffing into the air in the first place. But that gets my fingers all pruny, which makes the tiny pieces even harder to hold. And shell has no flex to it, thus breaking sawblades much more easily. And even if they don't break, they dull quickly. And after all that, shell blanks still aren't always exactly equal thickness, so you have to sand them thinner sometimes, and adjust router depth for each piece, because the patterns change significantly if you inlay proud and scrape down. Plus scraping down takes for-freaking-ever (dulling the scraper quickly too, of course), and can't be done wet, which means I have to do it outside where any dust that doesn't stay piled up gets carried away by the wind.

Yeah, I don't think there's any easy way to inlay But I love it anyway. That moment of seeing a piece finally scraped flush, glue and grunge and roughness removed, all the pain goes away.