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Project Guitar
First let me say thanks to Brian Johnson from Project Guitar for the inspiration for this post — this is not an original Guitar Inlays Headquarters idea. In fact as I was snooping around the Internet looking for some new ideas and interesting things to write about, I found a bunch of great resources on custom guitar inlays at Project Guitar, and Brian’s post was just one of several fantastic articles over there. Here’s a link his original post on Project Guitar.
The Problem
So basically Brian’s problem was that he was trying to come up with some simple and wallet-friendly way to do fret markers that would pose little risk to the inlay work he had already done on the rest of the fretboard.
In his own words:
I wanted to come up with a simple and economical way to make position markers with little chance of destroying the work I had done up to that point.
The Answer
So what did Brian come up with?
Guitar picks + Hole Punch + Drill = Fret Position Markers. 1..2..3..Bam! You’ve got uber cheap and easy custom guitar inlays. It’s a pretty sweet little trick because it’s very cheap, very easy, and you can use guitar picks of any color to match the style of whatever project you’re working on. It’s not quite as cool as these high-tech custom guitar inlays that we wrote about which light up in sync with music, but hey — we’re on a budget here!
Custom Fret Position Markers
You’ll need to prepare the following:
- 1/4″ flathead screw driver
- 1/4″ drill bit and drill
- 1/4″ hole punch
- A bevy of medium gauge guitar picks
According to Brian, the best way to start is by using a 1/4″ drill bit to drill very slowly into to fretboard. He emphasizes that these holes do not need to be deep. Once you’ve drilled in a bit (no pun intended, although I admit I did chuckle after I wrote it..), take a 1/4″ flathead screw driver and clean out the hole. The best way to do this is by inserting the head of the screwdriver into the cavity as straight as possible, and just spinning the screwdriver around in circles, as though you were screwing or unscrewing something. If the screwdriver and drill bit are both exactly 1/4″ size (which they should be) then the screwdriver should be a nice tight fit inside the cavity. Spinning the screwdriver around in circles within the cavity will then smooth out the side edges and the bottom, as well as loosen up any dust in the cavity.
Once we get all the extraneous remnants out of the hole and we have a nice clean cavity, we’ll need to ready our guitar pick discs. Basically, you use a regular 1/4″ hole punch (the same kind we used back in grade school) to punch a hole in a guitar pick, and we’ll use that little guitar pick donut-hole as the inlay. Brian mentions in his post that he’s had luck with medium gauge guitar picks, but believes that heavier gauge picks would also work well.
Once we have our guitar pick discs all punched out and ready to go, I recommend using a touch of super glue as an adhesive. Just a drop or two on the back of the disc should do it, and then we can put it into the cavity (adhesive side down, of course). Brian warns that it should be tight enough that you’ll need to use the head of your screw driver to push it in all the way, but you can also use a bit of super glue over the top to full in gaps. And of course in the end don’t forget to sand things down (try starting with 120 grit, then 220, then 400, and so on).
And that’s pretty much it. Just a handful of steps and you’ve got a set of ghetto-fabulous DIY fret marker custom guitar inlays.
Think this is a good tip? Or is it shite? Let me know in the comments!
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