Official Luthiers Forum!

Are there any alternative to shells that look almost as good as shell, but without the weird rules associated to it?

Are there celluloid abalone substitute? (like pearl)?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Acrylic inlays. A lot of the bigger companies have started using these. Not entirely but on a lot of products. There are lots of various colors available then just the natural looking shell materials.

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Another day, another dollar.

Recon stone sometimes is nice in place of abalone

anyone used a product called "Inlace"??

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MK5acoustics.com

I've been doing more inlay in wood of various colors and grain patterns. It's not as reflective as shell, of course, but some can be surprisingly bright. You can find all sorts of little pieces of interesting wood around. One of my favorites, a golden brown and highly reflective wood called 'Euonymus atropurpurea' comes from a local shrub/small tree that I picked up once when doing some salvage logging at a construction site for fire wood. It was not a very big tree, but inlay doesn't require a lot of material and I've been able to stretch it out for over thirty years. Look around!

Yo, Tai...

Whatever you can shove into a routed or carved pocket, usually lays flat when finished and stays put is a valid inlay.

So that would be....

metal
plastics
mineral
and biomass material.

dude....thats a lot of stuff and some of the plastics actually mimic shell properties.

Take a look at opalescent, pearlescent, iridescent and interference mica partials or powders which you can mix with any binder.

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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You mean mix pearl powders (for painting) into resin such as epoxy and pour it into the cavity? That just sounds too easy to be true! However for open grained base wood, wouldn't the resin also fill into the grain, causing unintended effect?

I've done wood inlay though, actually prefer it because it's nowhere near as dangerous as cutting shell. But where can I find a bunch of scrap exotic woods that I don't currently use? Specifically something good like koa, cocobolo, mad. RW, Ziricote, etc.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Ya dude...

Ya, mica particles in a binder....whatever kinda binder you wanna use....and yes that would include epoxy.

Shellack is pretty well the universal sealer.

Many of the wood veneer dealers offer "the box" .... you know the box of fifty or a hundred or so different veneers. Try Google....you might be surprised.

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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And cutting shell is dangerous because ....????

Well because,

the shells from the ancient lineages of bivalves, gastropods, and cephalopods and the like, are excrement made by these alien lifeforms to protect them from humans destroying their homes and as such they are highly toxic for the sublime purpose of helping rid the planet of war mongering human psychopaths.

Any questions?

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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When inhaled it can lodge in the lung membranes. Can cause respirator problems and even pneumonia. It can cause skin irritations. Bone dust can cause problems also...Mike

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Another day, another dollar.

I've cut dots out of pearloid binding. I should have put some foil behind them when I glued them in but they came out OK. I've also used ivoroid with some success.

Presumably there must be some additional component in abalone shell which makes the chemical composition radically different than regular chalk ...ie simple calcium carbonate. Does anybody know what that hazardous component might be?

I spent my juvenile years in primary (grade) school surrounded by a perpetual haze of chalk dust caused by the teacher cleaning the blackboard ...I must have inhaled pounds of the stuff over the years ... 50 years on I have never in my life suffered from any respiratory problems, and AFAIK neither have any of my erstwhile classmates, nor do I recollect any teacher ever suffering any skin irritation despite their constant contact with chalk and chalk dust.

According to MSDS, water is pretty hazardous too.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

You may find something here...lots of alternatives.
http://stores.masecraftsupply.com/StoreFront.bok

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Dave
Milton, ON

Anyone done metal inlays, you know like brass or nickel silver (same materials frets are made of)?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Chuck Erikson ,aka the duke of pearl, is working with a brilliant chemist and product developer to create a new generation of none wild life inlay materials . they both stopped by my shop this summer to show me some of the new products they are working on. Contact him and see if they are available yet.

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Now that's cool

Well, as a chalkboard lecturer for 30 years now ... I can't say that the chalk is any more than an irritant necessarily, but I can certainly tie periods of feeling like I'm fighting a chest cold to periods of heavy classroom presence. I can't say I've ever found it to be a skin irritant.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

I can't help but think that stuff is probably more expensive than the real thing...

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

i think what people are referring to regarding shell dust being dangerous is the silica content, which gets in the lungs, never breaks down(it is glass), and can lead to silicosis and lung cancer. more for something like a quarry worker or concrete cutter to worry about i'd guess; cutting a bit of shell now and then probably isn't deadly
http://www.cbs.state.or.us/osha/pdf/pubs/3301.pdf

In case you didn't notice, Stewmac has (acrylic) pearloid dots and other shapes. The acrylic faux pearl looks pretty good. It's possible to buy the stuff in sheet form too, but I have no idea of availability in Taiwan.

Celluloid fake pearl and abalone has been used for decades. It is possible to buy small sheets of this for pickguards or whatever. (check electric guitar supply places) If you wanted to be a cheapskate, you could punch some dots out of guitar picks, though they'd be thin and at risk for sanding through.

Filling a recess with resin/putty/whatever is never going to look as neat as inlaying a prepared piece. It can work ok for something easy, like a dot, as long as the wood is well sealed.

If you wanted to be a super cheapskate you could buy a sheet of shell looking adhesive stickers. Just trim and stick before finish. Lol