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Building my first guitar and have been planning on incorporating a fairly simple, yet custom inlay. I have no prior skill or experience with shell inlay and I am not looking forward to the potentially expensive learning curve on my first build.

I noticed the Inlace liquid "inlay" product at Woodcraft and am curious if anyone has any experience using this. I have been thinking of making a template and routing out the inlay to about 0.125" on a fretboard blank using a Foredom, filling the routed cavity with the Inlace, and then sanding the blank to a 10"-20" compound (conical) radius using a custom jig and my 6x80 edge sander.

Would love to hear of anyone else's experience with this product, as well as any thoughts, ideas, or potential flaws in my plan. In thoroughly researching this project, I read several times that jigs and templates are the best tools a novice (and even experienced) builder can use to improve the finished product and prevent costly mistakes! As a result, this project is moving at a snails pace as I practice techniques on scrap wood and conceive, blueprint, construct, and test all kinds of different jigs

Looks intriguing

I think the routing part is harder than cutting the shell. With a dark fingerboard you can easily fill any gaps where you oversized the inlay cavity or where a sharp corner broke away. Heck...some of my early inlays were more fill than shell.
Unless you have router templates or maybe a CNC set up, it could be hard to get a smooth edge to the cavity and that will show with a liquid inlay.
Looks like interesting stuff though. I'd try it on a scrap before committing a fingerboard to it

I've seen some work made with something like that, chemstone i think, but not sure. Maybe a good option when inlaying on clear woods, but on dark ones, as Quine says, its easier to fill gaps than routing accurate.

I know a builder who used inlace in a couple guitars. My personal opinion is that it looks "fake" verses actual shell or other typical inlay materials. Again, just personal, but I did not like the look at all. I have used inlace to dress up a Mesquite wood mantel I made over the fireplace, alternating some fill with just black epoxy with black epoxy impregnated with turquoise pieces. That looks cool, but not the same effect at all in a guitar. I agree that the most difficult part of inlay is the routing anyway, so I don't think you'd be much ahead of the curve by using inlace verses true inlay. My $0.02

I've used it in a headstock.

The material is EXTREMELY finicky to mix.

It's a hard rubbery plastic when cured properly, not like a hard acrylic.

I did find it tough to route a nice enough channel to pour it into with satisfactory results. It fills every little imperfection, so your lines have to be spot on PERFECT to look right.

It actually IS easier to do actual inlay IMO.

The final result looks extremely FAKE.

Not a fan personally.

Your mileage may vary, I probably just really sucked in my attempt, someone with more skill may do better.

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