AJ’s custom Stratocaster – day 2
Glad I didn’t have the energy to finish working on the inlay yesterday. AJ decided on a slight change to the design. I am now going to inlay his initials above the pickups and terminate the original stripes at the pickups and the initials. I was still lacking energy today so I didn’t work on the cabinet. Instead, I fooled around with the initials. I started by planing a scrap piece of maple down to 1/2″ thick. I am only going to inlay the initials 1/4″ deep, so I don’t want it to be too thick.
Planing down a piece of maple
Once I cut a small piece off of the maple, to use for the letters, I used spray-glue on the back of my template to affix it to the maple.
Spray-on glue
Initials glued to the maple
New template
Drilling out the inner openings
Once the glue set up, I drilled as large a hole as I could inside each letter. I then fed the scroll saw bit through the hole and cut out the inside openings.
Cutting the inside corners
Next, I finished cutting the outsides of each of the letters. I took a small file to the inside openings to clean them up. I sanded off any high-points that the saw blade may have left behind. I am probably going to give it another day or two before cutting into the guitar body to do the inlay.
Cutting out the “B”
Midnight Woodworking 