My latest YouTube video covers designing, CNC cutting and inlaying the two mother of pearl motifs on the pickguards of Brian May’s famous Red Special guitar and his arch top semi-acoustic guitar made by Andrew Guyton of Guyton guitars. I demonstrate the process of gluing them into 2″ diameter black acrylic discs using black cyanoacrylate superglue. Duration is 7m 20s.
I had been wanting to try some inlay work for a while, for a challenge and something different to do. I constructed the shape by overlaying arc and line segments over a zoomed high resolution image, adjusting all the positions until the spacings were symmetrical taking account of photographic parallax then finally traced over that with a polyline. Care needs to taken to get the feed rates and spindle rotational speed correct first time because this small (42 x 22 x 1.0 mm) sheet of mother-of-Pearl (nacre) cost £7.49 from Rothko and Frost. Next I need to compile the cutout toolpath for the perspex. This is not as straightforward as simply linearly scaling up the object in CAD and using it as a subtrahend to create a rebate. The entire object needs to be reconstructed from a closed polyline which has an outline that is uniformly larger by the cutter diameter.
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