This week I took a break from my current projects for a couple days in order to do a CNC inlay project i’ve been planning for a while. I was checking out some works by art nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha, and found one of his works “Dance” that blew me away. I decided to try and adapt it as a headstock inlay and this is what i have so far. I started by importing the image into my CAD program and picking parts of the painting that would adapt to inlay. I traced lots of stuff and planned the layering steps for doing the inlay. The pieces were cut out of various materials, and then stained and highlighted. Some of the pieces needed to be cut with a tiny .015 cutter, and the engraving tool has a .006 wide point!
The pics are pretty much in chronological order, next step is to apply a light leveling glaze to make the surface perfectly smooth. Fun stuff.
This inlay will go on a guitar i plan to take to the Montreal Guitar festival this summer. I’m not set on the other aspects of the guitar, maybe 16″ archtop with some killer woods…. Stay Tuned!!
