Flame on

Reinhard · 2010-11-10T18:16:33+00:00

Nice pic taken by Nick's GF. First decent pic I have gotten showing the flame on my LP

vic

Reinhard wrote These ones actually had a brownish tinge to them, but if you sand them they go white again. When you sand them they smell like Vicks strangely enough.
The guy I bought it from even sent me the chisels, radius blocks and sandpaper to make the fitting as easy as possible.

Even with all those tools and facilities, I would not even attempt such a task.... ? Well done.

singemonkey

Yeah. Kudos. That's a hard-core thing to do on a prized guitar.

Were the old ones yellow, or was it just the rounded corners? They weren't like those vomit inducing yellow ones they were putting on LP Classics for a while, were they?

How did you find the process? Do they basically fit and you just have to carve out the corners? Were you able to get really flush edges (it looks like you did in the pic, but it's hard to tell).

AlanRatcliffe

I'm surprised that they used cellulose (or rather, celluloid which is the thermoplastic made with nitrocellulose and camphor) instead of MOP. Although plastics were the in thing in the '50s, being relatively rare and expensive compared to wood and shell (imagine that!), so that could be the reason they used it.

Celluloid yellows fairly quickly and shrinks over time, so you'll find in a decade or so it will pull away from the edges of the rout. It can also ignite quite easily and shavings/dust can explode. All of which is why it is rarely used anymore.

A scraper blade is the best thing for levelling inlays IMO. Sharp corners and minimal filler are a good indicator of a hand fitted inlay. The router always leaves rounded corners and you just sharpen them with a blade.

Reinhard

They had rounded corners and had this busy white look to them. I had to sharpen the corners in the fretboard and just kept going till I got a good fit. Most of them fit really well, but if u look really close at the last 3 inlays you can see a small gap or 2. Like Alan said, they do shrink. The 99 historics have some of my favourite finishes, this one faded just like the old LP's, it's a bit more teaburst in real life. The back is brown like an old burst.

singemonkey

Alan Ratcliffe wrote Celluloid yellows fairly quickly and shrinks over time, so you'll find in a decade or so it will pull away from the edges of the rout. It can also ignite quite easily and shavings/dust can explode. All of which is why it is rarely used anymore.

Yeah. Old Gibsons do have gaps on the edges of the inlays where they've shrunk.

Does anyone make MOP in SA? With all that perlemoen poaching, you'd think we'd have quite the surplus.

AlanRatcliffe

Perlemoen is abalone, not MOP. What the instrument trade calls MOP usually comes from pearl or freshwater oyster shells. Both are nacre, but MOP is much smoother and whiter than abalone which varies in colour depending on the temperature of the water it is found in (compare our perlemoen to the Australian paua abalone.

singemonkey

Alan Ratcliffe wrote Perlemoen is abalone, not MOP. What the instrument trade calls MOP usually comes from pearl or freshwater oyster shells. Both are nacre, but MOP is much smoother and whiter than abalone which varies in colour depending on the temperature of the water it is found in (compare our perlemoen to the Australian paua abalone.

Ah. That explains it then. I thought abalone and MOP were the same thing. I can't help wondering if the inlays on my LP Deluxe are abalone. They're (all the Deluxes I've seen) much more figured than on other LPs. But maybe it's just a particular perloid mix they used for them. More likely, huh?

I think the main "Tokai" logo on my Tokai is paua abalone. I don't really like that stuff - 'cos it's hella gaudy - but that logo is very thin script. It's just when you move it about you catch all these glints of intense colour.

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