dont foget that we are going for fairly crazy fertboard wood - inlays like what you are suggesting look best on really dark and plain fretboards.
I have a few great bits of black pearl (arrrrrg, shiver me timbers!!!) left that will make something nice but it needs to be quite simple if its going to stand out.... might be best to leave that decision till after i have radiused the fretboard so we know exactly what the grain is like - it might suggest something to us!!
I dont really want to do the spalted wood on the headstock because i am going for a fender style of neck construction and the idea of getting a really thin bit of spalted wood to match the curved section really sounds like a PITA. But i can easily do it with black veneer and then i will inlay my 'WV' logo somewhere on that.
anyway back to the build, warts and all. I have just roughly cut the body out:
notice the dark spot - well spalted woods are a bar-steward. This stuffs relatively hard in the middle which is good for the bridge but has some quite soft bits where most of the spalting is. One of these sections got dented during glue-up. I had to steam it out - which worked well, and then sand it flat - which didnt because it was still a little damp and made it all discoloured.
I hate working with spalted wood so before we proceed i am going to try and sort it out. Here it is coated with west systems epoxy which is a boat builders epoxy. Its super strong, super hard and super clear..even better it doesnt smell as bad as cheap epoxy and its a lot thinner so soaks in quite deep on the spalted wood and should harden it off considerably
I think the dirty spot was still a little wet and is making the epoxy cloudy. Its all gonna have to be sanded back tomorrow anyway and i will probably have to do another coating tomorrow
On the plus side - it should turn out great!! spalting just creates so much extra work - i wonder if the factories that are suddenly using it go to this much effort. Mind you they probably dont make the mistakes i do
