Official Luthiers Forum!

Does anyone know of something I can mix with CA glue to make a bright white inlay filler? This is just for fine lines and gaps, not large areas. Something like the way you can add ebony dust for black. I have seen metal dust for gold, bronze, and silver, but nothing for white.

While I'm at it, is there a pearloid dust you can mix with epoxy?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I suspect that craft stores would carry something that would work. Getting a good colour-match with the right tone may require some testing.
Could you sand some of the material you are replacing and mix the sanding dust with CA?

Just a thought.

Bob

Fake ivory binding flaked or sanded in a pile add a drop of acetone.

Perhaps titanium dioxide?

you might check out baking soda.

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I wouldn't use CA glue for something you want white.....I'd use bone dust or baking soda and white school glue....

_________________
My Facebook Guitar Page

"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

White plastic binding doesn't seem to sand into dust. It just turns gummy. I'll try baking soda and white school glue. Thanks!

I had no problem making dust ,wonder it there are different kinds? running a scraper down one edge and making curls. It turns into a white putty that sets up hard and sandable .

Kampel seamfil comes in various shades of white as well as a multitude of colors. It is used to fill seams in laminate work and dries as a hard plastic.

Lithopone is a Zinc based very White pigment commonly used in paint and inks. I've mixed it with Fish glue, a little goes a long way. It should mix with epoxy but I've not tried that. It comes in a fine powder form, so it won't really act as a filler - just something to pigment the glue. Kremer Pigmente sell it.

there are a number of things you can use perhaps you can post a picture and then knowing what you are trying to accomplish we can give you the best answer to fit your needs.
CA and bone dust will not be dead white , Also what wood are you inlaying one?

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I would suggest you take a scrap piece of your plastic binding and use a scraper to get shavings. Put them in a small jar with Acetone. It will melt the plastic giving you a perfect filler that matches your bindings exactly. Putting a different material in the cracks will show up like a sore thumb and will probably develop cracks later on from the different expansion rates of the 3 different materials (Wood/Filler/Plastic).

You may need to put your first coat of sealer on before filling to keep the filler from bleeding into the wood. Since Acetone will eat almost any finish when wet you will probably still have to be very careful and work quickly. The other way would be to get a hypodermic needle and syringe large enough to apply the filler directly into the crack.

But most important is to test everything before you do it. As in almost everything, #1 Make a Plan. #2 Trial Run. #3 Execute Plan.

You don't what to have to repair the repair...

Cheers,
Bob

All good answers.....for a wood opposite....Holly is the whitest wood you'll find.

Not my best work, but this is bone dust and CA.

_________________
A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Sodium in water will give you a lot of bang for your buck...


(don't actually try this!)

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Rodger: nice! I was filling a gap between white plastic binding and maple, but I like your idea for inlay art.

My Cnc machine can carve very delicate line drawings with a v-bit. I think I'll try filling some with bone dust and ca to make the fine lines stand out.

Bob: yours seems the most promising for what I was trying to achieve. Will the acetone/plastic evaporate and harden again? Or do I mix that with epoxy or CA?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just use Acetone and the plastic. The The Acetone will evaporate out and just leave the plastic. It is the same process you use when you laminate plastic bindings together. In that case you just brush the Acetone between the strips and press them together and they are pretty much fused together. I have also repaired a few plastic bindings by the same method. Just be sure that your lines in the gap are smooth and even or the new material will show the uneven gap as a different width of the white binding.

Pictures would help a lot in this case since we don't have any idea what you are actually trying to fill.

But even at that I would highly suggest you try to reproduce what you are doing on a scrap piece of wood before you attempt the actual repair. You have to be confident in what you are doing before you do the real thing or as I said before, "You will be repairing the repair".


Bob

white gap ?? .. simple .. white shellac stick and the burn in method with a hot knife.

_________________
Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

It seems to me that you have one primary challenge that hasn't been mentioned yet. The ebony dust/CA approach works very well because it creates a very dark, almost black filler. It seems to me that that human eye likely sees slight differences in black less acutely than we do for shades of white. There are many different, slight variations in "white". If your filler isn't very, very close to the shade of white that you are trying to match, it will stick out like a sore thumb. So, the suggestion above about , 1) make a plan, 2) TEST ON SCRAP, then make changes if it doesn't result in the shade you wanted, and 3) execute the plan, is critical.

CA always seems to darken the appearance of the medium that it's gluing, so I suspect CA won't work.

Good luck.

A CNC would give really good results, but I'm not sure a v-bit would be the way to go. The bone dust/CA needs a minimum thickness to be really white (I'm guessing about 0.03"), and vertical walls in the channel will give you a sharper edge. The one in the photo I did freehand with a dremmel, no base or anything, so it's a little shaky. The dental burr I used was about the width of the line, and any little fault along the top edge of the channel shows up.

_________________
A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Get some white chalkboard chalk and scrape it with an X-Acto knife. The powder mixes well with most anything. I use chalk pastels for color in fills all the time. I use them with super glue for deep fills, or with lacquer or shellac to do finish touch up.
One example of a pastel chalk assortment:
http://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Pastel-Assorted-Colors-Square/dp/B008JRKKI8

_________________
John

Some excellent ideas here. I do have to say that Corky's point parallels my experience--pretty easy to fill black, much harder filling areas that are lighter. Whatever fill you use, in my experience, it's less noticeable when a filled area is slightly darker than slightly lighter than the surrounding area.

_________________
Tim Allen
"Never hurry, never rest."

I didn't realise it was a filler to match an existing White, which will be extremely difficult to obtain an invisible match.
You will probably need a very White substance and another as a tint so that it allows various shades of White. That and a lot of experimenting might get you very close. When mixed with glue the final colour is often not achieved until the mix has fully dried, which makes colour matching even more difficult. Personally I use Lithopone and Lycopodium to create anything from a brilliant White right through to a Tan colour. Lycopodium is often used by Violin makers as a 'filler' to match with Spruce.

talcum powder.

_________________
Mike Collins