Harvey Leach  Custom Inlays and Guitars 

Making Bricks for the Great Wall Guitar

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Here is the line drawing that is used for the patterns and the final result.

Black and koa veneers are processed the same as the herringbone vest discussed earlier. This time the strips are glued together using a form so they will have the correct shape for the ropes. Here a sheet of Corian is cut to the shape and tiny wedges are used to apply pressure, once the glue is dry the Corian is removed leaving a perfectly formed rope. The ropes are then inlaid into the bundle.

Next I’ll make the bundle of poles (I’m not exactly sure what this is… ) for the samurai inlay. The end of the bundle is made by making a log from alternating sheets of brown and white construction paper. This roll is made as close to the shape of the end of the bundle as possible and then heavily impregnated with resin to form a phenolic. After all that a single slice is cut from the roll. The bamboo sticks are made from alternating mahogany and zebrawood veneers. The end of the bundle is then combined with the bamboo. The patterns are left in place so I’ll know where the ropes go.

 This is a common technique used to create soundhole rosettes. To create the leggings, strips of orange and white veneers are formed into a curve, a second lay-up is made with colors reversed. Slices are cut from the end and combined to create a mosaic to cut the leggings from. Once the leggings are cut they are added to the garments for the lower half of the samurai.

The sleeves are cut from the woven sheet, the hands and the sword handle are added first and then the head and outer garments. The vest is cut from the herringbone sheet and the outer garments are added. Finally all the pieces are combined to create the upper half of the samurai.

A strip is trimmed from each edge of the sheet and the black veneer is applied to the new exposed edges, this is repeated until I have enough to create the mosaic sheets I need to cut the garments from. On one sheet the strips alternate to create a herringbone pattern and the other the strips are parallel to create a woven pattern.

First alternating black and mahogany veneers are glued into a sheet. Next the sheet is cut into strips and turned 90 deg. to expose the layers. The strips are then glued together to form another sheet. The sheet is then cut in half on an angle and then the two pieces are joined together. The joined pieces trimmed to the correct angle and glued to a veneer, the only purpose of this veneer is to hold everything together during the following steps. The backing veneer is trimmed away and a strip of black veneer is glued to each end, this black will accentuate the woven look when completed.

Advanced Inlay Techniques and Special Effects.