jdowning
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Making Dot Inlays
Dot inlays are a simple decorative finishing touch to apply to any instrument.
Dot inlays in various materials and diameters may be purchased from luthier material and tool suppliers but it is a simple matter to make your own
custom dot inlays. Materials may be wood, bone, shell or soft metal.
The attached images are examples of how I have applied bone and ebony dots to two guitars that I have made - a copy of a
17th C French 'Baroque' guitar - with ebony fingerboard 'stings' set into the soundboard and a copy of an early 19th C French guitar (Grobert) with
bone inlays to the pegs, bridge pins and bridge scroll - as on the original instrument.
The ebony dot on the Baroque guitar is connected to the fingerboard with strips of ebony veneer inlaid into grooves on the soundboard. The grooves
were cut using a fine craft knife with a metal template as a guide and the waste stripped out of the groove with a craft knife blade ground into a
hook shape.
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jdowning
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Ideally dots should be slices cut from dowel turned in a lathe. However, if you don't have a lathe, short lengths of dowel can be made by hammering a
piece of the dot material into a hollow punch or by driving the material through a dowel sizer. Hollow punches are readily available at low cost from
hardware stores or tool suppliers. They should be honed sharp before use.
A dowel sizer can be made by drilling a hole of the required diameter in a piece of steel plate about 1/8 inch thick and then lapping the top face
flat on an oil stone to produce a sharp edge to the hole. The plate can be held in a vice or simply laid over a clearance hole drilled in a block of
wood.
The short length of dowel produced in this manner is then held in a simple bench hook and sliced up with a razor saw to produce the dots.
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jdowning
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If you only have thin sheet material to hand - which cannot otherwise be formed into a dowel - then dots may be cut using a plug cutter.
The smallest commercially available plug cutters are usually
1/4 " in diameter.
However, smaller cutters (trepanning tools) can be made from steel tube of the required bore by filing one end of the tube square and then filing saw
teeth around the circumference to form a cutting edge. These cutters are used in a drill press with the work firmly clamped.
Alternatively, small diameter plug cutters can be made from hex. shank countersinks - readily available at low cost from hardware stores or tool
suppliers. The come in a range of diameters for wood screw sizes #4 to # 14. The drill is first removed from the countersink cutter. The cutter is not
designed to cut a core so any burrs left by the manufacturer in the bore of the cutter must be removed with a needle file or Dremel tool grinder and
the cutting edges honed to a sharp edge.
The cutter is used in a drill press with the work firmly clamped. Using a slow downward feed it is best not to cut right through the work but to cut
only part way. The dots can then be freed by removing the waste material on a bandsaw or alternatively by planing or sanding away the waste.
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jdowning
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Holes for the dots should be cut with brad point drills of the correct diameter these are readily available in a range of fractional inch sizes as
well as metric. Only drills with spur lipped cutters should be used as these give a clean cut hole whereas the cheaper type of brad point drill (the
image on the right) can produce 'tear out' on entry. Ordinary HSS drill bits can also be made into brad point spur bits by regrinding the cutting
edges to the required shape with a Dremel grinder.
Metal inlay dots can be an attractive alternative to wood or bone. Silver dots may be made not from silver - which is a poor choice because it
tarnishes quickly - but from pure tin. Craftsmen of the 16th C frequently used tin in place of silver for inlay work for this reason. Pure tin is a
soft, easily worked, silvery coloured metal. It is readily available in various diameters in accurately drawn wire form, sold as lead free solder in
any hardware store. Lead free solder is an alloy of about 97% pure tin and 3% silver. It is used for soldering copper pipe in household water systems.
The soft metal wire is easily cut into dots - like the wooden dowels - using a razor saw and bench hook.
The dots are glued into their respective holes and then filed or scraped flush with the adjacent surfaces after the glue has cured. When gluing the
dots be sure to press them firmly into the holes to drive out any trapped air which otherwise can cause the dot to pop out before the glue has set.
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Peyman
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Great tutorial and comprehensive too. That looks like a nice lute too (with your brand). Can we see a bigger picture, maybe?
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jdowning
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Thanks. Here are some images of the Baroque guitar as requested. These are from some 'stock shots' that I took earlier this year so the definition is
not very good - apologies for that.
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jdowning
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...... and some images giving a bit better detail. The three dimensional rose is typical for guitars of the 17th C. Would look good on an oud too I
imagine. Has anyone tried?
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Peyman
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Sorry, didn't realize it was a guitar. Very nice details nevertheless. Reminds me of the famous Stradivari guitar.
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