Bailey inlays and Alec logo
About Inlays and water decals:
The Bailey logos are made from Black Tahiti Pearl as are the fret position marker dots. This is what we call an ‘inlay’. These are carefully cut out by hand using a jewellers coping saw then a slot is cut for the piece to fit into using a mini router. Inlaying by hand is very labour intensive and can be quite an expensive procedure. It is very hard to inlay light coloured wood as the glue is usually visible, although you may have to look pretty close! Darker coloured woods are much easier, especially Ebony which is black. With Ebony I use black glue and the join is virtually invisible. For this guitar I mixed up a paste of wood dust from an off-cut of the fretboard, and epoxy, to try to match the colour. After the glue has dried the inlay is sanded flush to the surface.
The ‘Alec’ logo was too fine to be made like this, it would just break, so we made a water decal instead. These are much cheaper and sometimes they can look better. The ‘laser transfer’ paper requires a laser printer but means anything that can be printed can be easily used as a logo. It works just like the old ‘airfix’ kits: soak in water for 1 minute and then paper backing slides away to leave the transfer in place. When dry it is buried under 4-5 coats of lacquer to seal it in.