…..Now you see them, now you don’t…..
Jul 9, 2009 @ 11:48
Removing the mother of pearl inlays on Martin Taylors guitar ‘The Chet’
While I was waiting for a reply from Martin about whether or not he liked the inlay design I decided to crack on with the next bit, which was removing the old MOP dots and replacing them with ebony ones to make them ‘disappear’. Of course if you are Martin Taylor you can probably do alright without them! Most mortals need these fret position dots as markers to let us know where our fingers are but he just uses ‘The Force’……or ‘The Ears’ …as I like to call them…..The Ears are strong on this one….OB1.
I thought it would be easier and quicker to just drill them out by hand, but I did have to seriously brace myself for this one. I did the first one very carefully as the beads of sweat formed on my forehead. This one worked well so I went for it – It is best to forget at this point you are working on a virtually priceless irreplaceable instrument and just get on with it.
The drill makes a slighty tapered hole and the plug cutter does the same to the ebony dowels so they fit perfectly. The end result was pretty good – if you didn’t know they were there you wouldn’t see them. They will look even better after a coat of Lemon Oil. Success!….Now what’s next? Bring it on!…….