Official Luthiers Forum!

Gotcha - yeah, I been watching your build - I think it's real gutsy and it's gonna be a helluva guitar when you are done - we can always use them as weapons if all else fails!

I finally finished the art work for the fretboard - on to cutting shell & stone this week! Woot Woot!

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"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

I'm anxious to see this one shape up, Virgil. I'm sure you're not going to let us down

ACK! THE PRESSURE IS ON!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Day 3 of fretboard inlay - got a bunch of materials glued up & cut yesterday, more glued up today, will finish gluing tomorrow - take your guess what the pieces below are! Go ahead, let's see what ya got!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

White, blue, yellow, looks like some kinda flower.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

An extremely complicated inlay?

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

We have a winner, Isle 4.

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Another winner - anyone's guess on the materials on right?

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Day 4 of the fretboard inlay....


Here are the cutouts for the Gold MOP vines and leaves:


Also cutouts of the willow leaves here:


I cutout and glued up all the vines this morning:


Here are ALL of the pieces for the fretboard inlay - the cut pieces shown in front are actually upside down - they still have the paper super-glued to the tops. Hopefully I can get everything cut out by the weekend:



There is a hummingbird, dragonfly, a flower, flourishes and vines(branches).
Gold MOP
White MOP
Paua Abalone
Green Abalone
Bronze MOP
and assorted colored recon stone.

gettin' there...

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Have you considered paint? Just saying. LOL I expect to see more inlay this time. Those dragons were OK, but something a little more complicated would be nice. Especially after you made those plain jane palm planes with NO inlay at all.

_________________
http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

LMAO Tony! Less inlay on the fretboard on this build, but a bit more complex because of the insane stuff I will be doing to the body. The fretboard inlay will have more color and definitely more interesting than the dragon tails IMO, although slightly "generic". On guitars 3 and 4 everyone may be REALLY disappointed cuz I'm thinking of no inlay or very little... I am guessing that guitar #5 will be the most craziest inlay you will ever see.... if i live that long!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Finally finished up cutting all the fretboard inlay pieces yesterday... this morning I brought the fretboard to a 12" radius - it was at 16" - theguitarwhisperer noticed that it was not an accurate radius and loaned me an 18" aluminum radius sanding bar and it took a while, but I finally got it perfect. I decided to draw some pencil lines over the frets and noticed it was really low on one side near the 6th-8th frets area and it took forever to bring the whole thing down to that level. Not sure where the dip came from, but everything is excellent now.

Moved on to gluing up some inlay pieces - here's some pic's yall!!!



My first hummingbird!



I originally had a butterfly, but I thought it was a bit "Girly" (Insert Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice here), and changed it into a dragonfly (as if the dragonfly isn't "girly"?)





Sorry about the pics - the color isn't quite accurate, but it'll do...





Hopefully I should have everything glued up on the reversed image by tomorrow!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

I like birds.
Hummingbirds are among my favorites.
Nice work.

Thanks Alan - It's funny, I just started noticing how many hummingbirds we have in our neighborhood - I always think they're some insect because they're so tiny... and we have little brown ones around here. I remember seeing one almost like this one back when I used to live in Tucson - I imagine they have cool ones out in Cali?

What I really like about doing inlay is you do this part with all of the "Bad side" of the materials, and it's pretty exciting when it comes time to flip everything over.

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Nice!

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

Wow... that is impressive to say the least!

That's going to be pretty sweet, Virgil. I love how you seem to thrive on the most complicated stuff. I wonder what Grit Laskin's first and second inlay jobs were...

Thanks Yoshi!
Thus far, I have been shooting for a little more complicated inlay stuff and it has definitely been a challenge so far - it's hard to tell how it will look until I actually get it all IN the fretboard LOL!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

tnx gw - i guess you are the only person on the forum to see this live from time-to-time eh?

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Haha hehe, yeah, u got me pegged with that - what's funny is the inlay art is WAY less complicated in the drawing side of things compared to the pen & inks I have done over my life. Unfortunately, it seems my fingers are a bit too large to go into the real tiny stuff for inlay. I am REALLY addicted to doing inlay because of not knowing what things are going to look like until I'm on the later phases of the work - it actually gets uglier and uglier as you go along until the final sanding when the true art gets revealed - that's worth all the work to me. I want to do more, but the next 2 builds will be rather simplistic compared to #1 & #2.

I am very curious as to how Grit does the things that he does. Inlay work is art, math and a few other things mixed up into 1 and I also wonder what his first pieces as well as Larry Robinson's looked like. I have to remember though, these guys have been doing their gig for years and I am still a rookie... lots and lots of things I am trying to get better at that will take time. Right now, my biggest problem is holding the saw correctly and trying to not break so many blades. The saw needs to be held PERFECTLY verticle to the piece and sometimes I veer off from the proper angle. A few more pounds of MOP and Abalone and I should get better LOL.

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

I would say that hummer looks like a Rufous hummingbird.
The sound like big bees when they fly sometimes.
Rufous is one of my fav colors, for now.
We have Annas, Alan, and Rufous hummers here.
That's about it.
I wanna do a rose inlay of a rose,
also a parrot of some kind.
You are inspiring me.
I can't wait for work to slow down......

It's actually a Ruby-throated hummingbird - I loaded a photo from this web page: http://eaglebluff.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/ into Illustrator and traced out the different sections of the bird to make use of different inlay materials - flowers or parrots sound like a great reason to do inlay! TONS of colors! Slow down the work... so you can... uhhhh... GET TO WORK!!!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

WOOT WOOT! I got all the pieces glued together a couple minutes ago - ready to prep the fretboard in the morning to begin the inlay!!! I bought a nice quantity of Gold MOP, but use it upside down for the "White MOP" look, so the gold you see in the pics are actually going to look more white and the white dragonfly wings are actually gold!

Just a few pieces to go in this pic:



These pieces will be at the end of the fretboard around the 19th to 22nd frets:
http://www.virgilguitar.com/SilverWillow/DSC01286.jpg



Done:

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Just curious. These are upside down now, right? So, is the hummingbird going to be upside down, when glued in it's actual position?
?

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

Hehehe, "The Mind Is A Terrible Thing"

It's not upside down, it's actually reversed. The Hummingbird is on the 3rd fret. and he's not upside down, unless if you try turning it into a left-handed guitar

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar