Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi Folks....

I have a request from a client to make a guitar themed around the 'silver dollar' and as such we have talked about the possibility of various silver inlays about the guitar...

One idea is to have a ring of sterling silver in the rosette... a quick search turns up nothing, so i'm wondering is there a reason??

I'm envisioning a fairly standard rosette where the center ring is 'bwb, silver, bwb'. The silver being about 1mm in thickness. Can anybody foresee a problem with this? Silver is fairly soft to work so i would just level it flush and lacquer over as normal.... could it react with the lacquer (nitro), for example?

May be i'm missing something so i thought i'd just check with you good folks first?

Thanks.

G.

_________________
www.leddingtonguitars.com

8 pages of results searching "silver inlay", maybe start there?

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Hi Colin... just shot you a PM.

G.

_________________
www.leddingtonguitars.com

A possible concern might be lacquering over the silver wire. Silver tarnishes easily and nitrocellulose lacquer is somewhat permeable to air and moisture. The silver might tarnish under the finish and the finish would keep it from being repolished. Brass instruments use a special baked epoxy lacquer that is less permeable and allows the brass to hold its polish longer.
If you could leave the silver wire slightly proud of the lacquer (like cloisonne) it might allow it to be polished, but I don't know what other problems that might cause.

I have some limited experience of inlaying silver wire script in a couple of ebony head veneers. It worked well for me. The guitars were french polished but I finished the faces of the headstocks with brushed water based lacquer so as not to colour the silver. They have not tarnished in the three years since they were built.

I think that some Larrivee guitars have a silver border on the headstock but I`m unsure as to what finish they use.

When I was asked to do the silver inlay I spent some time looking at the options and one of them was to use argentium silver; this is supposedly tarnish free and easy to work. However I could not source any square wire in the gauge that I needed.

Lots of larrivees with silver border haedstock. Both nitro and poly...

I did my logo along with side dots in sterling silver and put shellac over them 7 years ago - still shiny

Ed

Aluminum banding looks like silver but it does not tarnish. Cheaper too.

Interesting ideas folks... thanks alot.

_________________
www.leddingtonguitars.com

What grit would you prepare a silver or aluminum inlay to. I imagine really fine would be needed to make it look shiny and polished but then would there be issues with finish sticking to it?

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I would sand to at least 600 grit but it would probably look better the higher you go. Don't worry about going too fine for finish. They apply lacquer to brass instruments after buffing to a high gloss. The main thing is to keep the metal's surface clean and free of anything oily before apply finish.

I`ve used fine Micromesh Up to 12000. No problems with finish adhesion.

I inlaid bits of silver into a piece of furniture 30 years ago and it still looks like I remember it did day one. The finish was nitrocellulose sealer and lacquer.