Gluing the Inlays

I'm posting two new posts today. Please scroll down to the post below this to see the start of the inlay process.

Today I had the opportunity to glue in my inlays. I used the fast setting two part Stew Mac epoxy. Honestly I kind of wish I had bought the stuff that cured a little more slowly and I would have liked a bit more time to fit the inlays. Things did work out well with the quick curing stuff so I'm not complaining.

After the inlays had a couple of hours to cure I put some 120 grit sticky sandpaper to my 12 degree radius sanding block and sanded the inlays flush with the fingerboard. Then I mixed some epoxy with some of the rosewood dust I'd collected when I routed the inlay cavities. The rosewood dust turned the epoxy a color that would match the fretboard. I put on some latex gloves and then used my finger to spread the epoxy on top and around the edges of the inlays to fill in any gaps. I left that to cure for a couple of hours and then sanded again with the 120 grit. The gap filling wasn't quite perfect so I repeated the process and this time it worked great! The smaller gaps disappeared entirely and you really have to look close to see the larger ones.

This is what the fretboard looked like after a flush sanded the inlays and then put epoxy on them to fill the gaps:


I finished sanded with 320 grit. Here are a few pics of the completed inlays:





As you can see some epoxy got in the fret slots. I now need to figure out a way to clean then up.

I'm very happy with how the inlays came out. I've had real Les Pauls that had far more gaps around the inlays.