I’ll let pictures tell most of the story. I’m using a piece of abalone for my standard Mountain Whimsy logo on the headstock. I start by mounting the blank to a thin piece of modeling plywood to add some strength. Then the pattern is attached to the face of the abalone blank.
Holes are drilled to provide access to the interior of the logo., where a coping saw is used to cut as close as possible to the template outline.
I used a set of needle files to do the final cleanup of the cuts and a disk sander to remove the material outside of the logo. A razor was used to remove the plywood backing from the shell. When I did this same thing for the Les Paul, it took me around eight hours to cut out and clean up the inlay. I did the same thing this time around in a little over an hour. Perhaps I have learned something from the past.
I am still deciding where and how to inlay this, but have some ideas in mind.
