(why did the banjo player leave his picks on the dashboard of his car? ....so he could park in the Handicap spot... )
I soon discovered you can't build banjos without inlays so there ya go... My first inlay was into a maple banjo fretboard, it was basically a hole shaped like the top of a fluer-de-lis and then filled with plastic wood. I never used it on a banjo but ironically I still have it, for many years I used it as a cutting board (known as a "birds-beak" in inlay lingo) at the time I didn't realize how symbolic that was. My first real inlay, cut from mother of pearl, is the lion's head pictured here:
The irony that I still have this doesn't escape me either,
although it probably says more about my marketing than my anticipation of
nostalgia.Over the next few years I did your basic patterns, on guitars and banjos and even reached the point where I was so tired of it I researched having someone else cut inlays for me. The moment of truth and the beginning of where I am now was when a customer asked me to build a guitar with a recreation of a vine pattern that was largely responsible for my not wanting to cut anymore, I couldn't afford to pay someone else so I decided I would cut it myself. I felt better about myself afterwards so I decide to stick with it. The next and perhaps most significant moment came when another customer asked me to inlay a dragon on an existing Les Paul guitar. This job took me way outside my comfort zone but since I needed the money... away I went. About this time I was introduced to a new take on an old material, Abalam. While many consider Abalam to be "imitation shell" it's really not that much different from the natural shell, it's made up of thin (about .007 inches... or the thickness of a hair!) slices of real shell that is then laminated together to for sheets or material that isAfter that I began to push my comfort zone further and further. I began to do work for other companies, small independs at first. I took on the job of inlaying the first prototype "Custom Shop" guitars for La Si Do (Godin, Seagull and Simon and Patrick) I guess I inlayed about 100 or so abalone trimmed Godin and Seagulls. After about a year of doing somewhat mindless abalone borders I began doing one of a kind work for PRS guitars, This association really changed me, first work was always challenging and the materials they wanted were far more varied than I was accustomed to. I began to see the potential for using materials that weren't from animals destined to be made into seafood delicacies! Larry Robinson once told me that the art was more important than the medium, if cutting up a Lego is the right color you must sneak into you son's room and go for it! I have recently even started trying to create my own inlay materials out of clay, polyester and baked epoxy. In the future I hope to push the envelope to new heights.