Free guitar building course · Part 5
Custom inlays,
including photo
inlay.
An hour on inlay work, from simple dots to a photo inlay technique — cutting cavities, fitting material, filling and levelling without wrecking the board around it.
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Chapter markers coming — paste the timestamps from the video description into the chapters field in videos.py and they become clickable here.
What this covers
- Choosing inlay material, and what each type is like to work with
- Marking and cutting the cavity accurately
- Fitting, glueing and filling gaps invisibly
- Levelling flush without sanding scratches into the fretboard
- The photo inlay technique — putting an actual image into wood
Where inlay work goes wrong
Almost always at the cavity, not the inlay. A cavity cut slightly oversized leaves a gap that no amount of filler hides convincingly under finish. Cut tight and ease to fit, rather than cutting to size and hoping.
Mask everything. Unfinished rosewood and ebony pick up scratches from stray abrasive very easily, and removing them means levelling the whole board.
Written companion in progress.
Watch the builds on YouTube
Full build videos, start to finish, including the parts that went wrong.
Build series · New video most months