THE CREATION OF AN HEIRLOOM: PETE’S CUSTOM-INLAID F-35
In early 2023, Ben at Ben and Bucky’s Guitar boutique was approached by one of his regulars who was interested in having Dale make a custom guitar for him. Pete was looking to get a “forever guitar”, and was leaning towards a Fairbanks. Dale and Ben walked him through the process of specifications and wood selection, and Pete landed on a F-35 Burst with an old-stock Adirondack spruce top, and old Mahogany back & sides. We really wanted to tailor this guitar to Pete, and where he was really interested in putting his own personal stamp on it was with the headstock inlay. To that end, we turned to our in-house team at Allied Lutherie, and the head CNC Wizard, Will Hylton:
“Pete came to us with what was already a great inlay concept. It had sentimental value, meaningful symbolism, a great composition, and worked with the vibe of the instrument as well as the vibe of our shop and its craftspeople. It was an opportunity that I wanted to take, and I thought it was a great opportunity to help push myself to the next level. This would be the first inlay I had done with the new machine technology I had at my disposal. The new HAAS CNC and its incredible accuracy allowed me to try things that I had previously thought to be impossible or otherwise too daunting. That being said, this was still a massive challenge and a huge undertaking, but I think the end result really shows the dedication, time, and devotion put into this piece, making this a fantastic work of art that Pete was absolutely thrilled with.
The process went something like this...Pete drew up a few sketches that were actually really great and honestly, could have been inlaid just as they were. Like I said, we wanted to go to the next level with it, however. I then played with the scale, placement, and composition slightly. I sent the designs to a local tattoo artist Yeshua Hill (Aka Martian Church), who sketched up some lines that helped us bring some more detail to the piece and also helped with the overall composition. This process is generally a pretty lengthy one and most of the time, easier to do by hand. I like to export this step to keep things moving while the experts in hand skill can do their magic. A day later, we got the piece back from Yeshua and I began the tedious process of digitizing the art. This process is a lengthy one, but I essentially trace the image and make solid shapes from the hand drawn lines (kind of like a coloring book) that I know can be inlaid. I like to bring in as much detail as possible and slowly work the geometry back down to realistic, manageable and machinable shapes.
“Pete came to us with what was already a great inlay concept. It had sentimental value, meaningful symbolism, a great composition, and worked with the vibe of the instrument as well as the vibe of our shop and its craftspeople.”
During this process I am also determining what order I will need to install the inlay parts in. Once the shapes are in a manageable state, the materials selection is next. We went over A LOT of different material options, including a few that I was unable to machine before in the past. Some ended up working and some did not. The materials that I ended up using were the "top shelf" of my personal reserve and I couldn't be happier with the selection used. Once Pete and the crew were happy with a rendering of the material selection, the machining began. This could be 4 feet worth of text if I went into full detail so to summarize the process I'll say this: it involves a lot of 0.010" micro cutters breaking, diamonds, lasers, cutting, removing, recutting, $6000 space probes, sanding, engraving, more sanding, cursing, starting over, glue, dyes, taking apart an old broken printer to harvest its toner, a 3D printer, and starting over again followed by some more sanding. I WOULD NOT be defeated nor would I settle for "ok". But with a bunch of perseverance, it was finished and handed off down the line where it would become part of a real instrument. “
To say Pete was happy with the final product would be a huge understatement - and so are we! Our entire team’s passion for producing the finest custom instruments is really evident in this build, and we’re excited to make more for our clients!
