Preparing the next fret marker #inlays. Dolphins on black mother of pearl.

The #abalone pieces are now glued onto rosewood scraps with epoxy resin for additional thickness and strength. After the resin has hardened I can proceed with cutting the contour.

Preparing the next #fretboard #inlay. Cut some pieces from the #abalone shell, which is more colourful but also thinner than the previous one. With this one, no loss of colour should occur after the inlay is set in and the fretboard gets radiused.

Another abalone shell (Haliotis iris) arrived today. Much richer in colour and most importantly, throughout the shell's thickness.

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Routing the #fret slots with a 0.5 mm end mill bit. They break very easily and to avoid that, feed needs to be very slow and only about 0.25 mm deep at each pass. The max. speed of my drill press is 2450 rpm, a fraction of what's optimal. Routing one slot like that takes about 45-60 mins.

This is a piece of #abalone shell. Before sanding it flat, its whole surface was greenish. It turns out that only the first few layers have coloured iridescence. If one needs these for #inlays on a radiused #fretboard, one risks sanding away all the colour. Through-thickness colour is what you need.