Fail series

Here's the results of some of my test runs. Not exactly successful, but I'll keep trying. Here's the inlay:

I tried freehand routing with a Dremel but the router bits don't really match the width of the veneer strips I'm gluing in - I have 0.8mm and 1.6mm bits and the veneer is 0.6mm. So whatever I do I get some gaps, plus the fact that I'm doing it by hand (with a 90 degree wobbly plastic dremel attachement) means that the edges are not perfect - the bit tends to wander a little. When I move to doing this in the ebony fretboard for the real guitar this will be partially easier, as I can fill the gaps with black epoxy or whatnot, but anyway I want to try to make them smaller. I have one idea for that. Stay tuned.

And now the second part - the knobs:

It turns out that "friendly plastic" is not the perfect tool for epoxy casting. Or maybe it is and I'm just using it wrong. Anyway, the idea of making an epoxy resin knob doesn't seem to work - its hard to get the shape right and the plastic sticks to the resin afterwards and its hard to tell which is which. So I think I'll try a different approach - I'll get a knob with a pearl cap and try to replace just the cap. Should be doable.