Official Luthiers Forum!

I was cutting my fretboard to apply inlays, but I've made holes bigger than my inlays, and had to fill the holes with glue and wood dust...It got a little bit darker than I would like. I mean, it's good, but not great. It's there a way to make it look less sketchy?

Enviado de meu ASUS_X00QD usando o Tapatalk

Add an outline around them (strip of black fiber or plastic sheet).

Those pockets look a little crooked, too. Were they routed square to the left side of the board after tapering?

At this point, I would just go pretty dark with the fingerboard. Adding one of the various protective oil/wax combinations tends to make the fingerboard go darker.

I think trying to fix this problem with more routing and more fitting is not the best solution. Just learn from the experience and make the holes tighter next time.

Probably not what you want to hear. I've been here before too. You can always pop the fretboard off and make a new one, to save the neck wood. Light colored fretboards just don't repair well - they show everything.

Which pockets? Can u explain? I'm not that familiar with English luthier lexical

Enviado de meu ASUS_X00QD usando o Tapatalk

Green lines follow the fret slots, blue lines follow the inlay edges. The frets are all parallel to eachother, and the inlays are all parallel to eachother, but inlays are not parallel to the frets.

Yes, that's why I had to sand fill it. Inlays are actually much smaller than the holes, so I Had some margin to adjust it when I was glueing them. But than I had this problem with ugly and dark sand fill.

Enviado de meu ASUS_X00QD usando o Tapatalk

Doing an invisible fill around inlays on a light-colored board is impossible to do.

If it were me I would either scrap the fingerboard and start over or,

Make new inlays large enough so that when placed over the filled cuts, and carefully centered horizontally and vertically, all the fill area is covered. Then glue them down in that position (with model glue) and carefully scribe around them. Then shave some white chalk into the scribed lines. Cut new cavities as tight as you can to the white line and inlay.

Do it well and you will always feel pride when showing the guitar off.

_________________
Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Very sage advice from Joe!