In the beginning, there was the bird.
A couple months back, I was thinking about adding an inlaid pearl hummingbird to Vera’s neck as a memorial to Antiguo. The hummingbird is symbolic of him for a lot of reasons, and having it on my guitar seemed like about as appropriate a place as any to put a memorial to the man who is, among other things, the reason I play guitar today. And I love inlay. I have a lust for paua shell that borders on the unseemly.
So I sent an e-mail to Paul Bordeaux at Bordeaux Inlay, a site I’d found through an ad in one of my guitar magazines and drooled over, to find out what something like that would cost. A hummingbird is, after all, the smallest bird there is, and I wanted one that wouldn’t exceed 2 frets worth of space. He was very nice, and he said it would cost me about $300 and that I’d be without Vera for 2 weeks while the work was being done in New York state. That seemed reasonable to me, and I was considering it very seriously.
I really don’t know what triggered the thought, but at some point during that consideration I thought, "Huh. I wonder if I could do it myself?"
These, of course, are the famous last words of all DIYers, and my exploits in this area are well-known. However, the thought stuck with me, and I started doing research. And I decided that not only COULD I do it, but I WOULD do it.
This blog, then, will chronicle my efforts in learning how to do this, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is my sincere hope that the good will outweigh the bad in less than a year, but I’ll share it all, in all its pictorial glory…or horror. Stay tuned.
