Bruceweiart mother of pearl inlay dots

Matt Clara

Matt Clara

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I've been buying my MOP inlay markers from Woodenspoke on ebay. I recently took a look at one of his competitors, Bruceweiart, maker of lots of inlayed products, as well as ukes and guitars. He's in Taiwan, I think. Bruceweiart has some sets of 50 inlay markers available for $9 a piece, plus something like $7 shipping. I made a best offer of $6 a set for three sets. I expected I would be charged triple the shipping, but that still worked out to a lot less than Woodenspoke, which in turn is less than StewMac/LMI/Hana Lima Ia. Long story short, my offer was accepted and all shipping was waived. I got 150 5mm markers for $18. That ought to hold me for a while. I'll let you know what the quality is like after I receive them.
W3a.jpg
 
Great deal, Matt. I hope the quality is good. Bruce is where I got the warped buffalo horn saddles, but that may have just been a bad lot, and he was very cooperative about it.

Let us know what they're like when you get them.
 
I just received the inlay dots, and the quality is very good. Just as nice as I received from Woodenspoke, who claims to supply some of the big luthier shops. Unfortunately, the Make Best Offer deal we had was for three packs of 50 for a total of 150 markers. I received one pack with 60. At $18, that's still a better deal than I could get here in the states (StewMac is .33 plus shipping, Brucewei is .30, shipping included). But it's not the deal we agreed to. I've written him to see what the story is.

While I was buying from him, I checked out some of his inlay items, and ended up buying a soprano fretboard with a dragon inlay. I thought it looked a little cheesy, but at $12.99 (.99 for the fretboard, 12 for shipping), I figured I couldn't go wrong. I just received it, too, and it's pretty cool. Looks much cooler in person.
Ukulele-Fretboard-80.jpg
 
I was kind of curious about these fretboards. I'm eager to see what you do with it Matt.
 
Hey Matt,
Thank you for supporting Bruce. I had recently bought a Tenor Ukulele from him because of some skepticism about who he was/what the quality was going to be like/the shipping cost. Let me tell you...for $150 ($65 for the uke and $85 for the shipping). It's a great instrument. Nice subtle inlays. Bridge was a tie inside the body type bridge. I would by this uke over a $150 Kala or Lanikai!
 
Dino said:
Hey Matt,
Thank you for supporting Bruce. I had recently bought a Tenor Ukulele from him because of some skepticism about who he was/what the quality was going to be like/the shipping cost. Let me tell you...for $150 ($65 for the uke and $85 for the shipping). It's a great instrument. Nice subtle inlays. Bridge was a tie inside the body type bridge. I would by this uke over a $150 Kala or Lanikai!
Click to expand...

Yeah, Bruce seems to have his act together. If I wasn't busy building them, I'd definitely buy one of his ukes.

Bruce wrote me back, apologized for the oversight, and politely asked if I was intending to buy anything else from his store, in which he would happily enclose the missing dots. I said, no, hell no. You owe me those dots, man. Just kidding. I said, sure, because I'd been eyeballing the 3mm dots for side markers. So I bought a pack of 50 of those, paying full price and shipping, so my good deal is less so, now, but it still works out to something like .17 a dot, where stewmac wants .33 ($34 / 200 = .17 right?). I should add, the one pack I did receive actually has 60 dots in it. Can't say whether they all will, but if they did, that would be .14. From the quality I've seen thus far, that's a very good deal.
 
Hey Matt, same thing happened to me with the buffalo horn saddles. Bruce agreed to ship replacements with my next order. But it wasn't a problem, since I wanted some 3mm MOP markers anyway. We haven't used fret markers at all so far, but figured we might need them as the scale lengths increase...

They ended up costing 11.50 EUR incl. shipping for 50, which is a good price for white dots. We can get pink, gold and black MOP dots for a lot less locally (about 7.50 EUR incl. shipping for 50) but the white ones cost more - comparable price here would be about 17.00 EUR. Of course, if I get charged import duties that would be 19%, so another 2,20 on top. But hey, that's still small fries compared to the wood, the tuners, the laquer, the saws and other tools...
 
Final update--I now have all the dots I ordered. The final two packs of 5mm 50 count dots are inconsistent in thickness. The dots are, that is (not the packs). They range from .91mm to 1.4mm (sample of five measured). The first pack I received, in contrast, are consistently 1.5mm in thickness, give or take .1. I think somebody misunderstood my original offer, or failed to take into account the free shipping combined with my offer would leave them screwed. I wish they had just said so, though, as most people would be fairly reasonable, what with the language barrier, and all.
 
Matt Clara said:
Final update--I now have all the dots I ordered. The final two packs of 5mm 50 count dots are inconsistent in thickness. The dots are, that is (not the packs). They range from .91mm to 1.4mm (sample of five measured). The first pack I received, in contrast, are consistently 1.5mm in thickness, give or take .1. I think somebody misunderstood my original offer, or failed to take into account the free shipping combined with my offer would leave them screwed. I wish they had just said so, though, as most people would be fairly reasonable, what with the language barrier, and all.
Click to expand...
I don't care about the dot thickness as long as the Dia's are all the same ..I fit them to the fretboard from the backside before the board is glued to the neck.
 
Timbuck said:
I don't care about the dot thickness as long as the Dia's are all the same ..I fit them to the fretboard from the backside before the board is glued to the neck.
Click to expand...

So you drill all the way through the fretboard for your dots? If so, what do you use to fill the space behind them? And yes, the diameters are all good (not that I checked all of them...).
 
Brilliant Ken, as always. I also want to know what you fill the void with as I hate voids, voids make barking sounds... but man that's brilliant and so simple. It's so... Bob... We're lucky to have ya.
 
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Matt sent me a PM asking me how I did it ..:D co's I'd lost track of this thread..anyway this is what i told him.
All I do is drill the board , turn it over place the spots in the holes and push them in with a small rod or drill shank, I put a piece of tape on the front side to stop the spots falling thro' and keeping them flush..Then I drop in a small amount of CA glue to fill the holes behind the spots and before it sets I quickly sand the back of the board and the dust mixes with the glue and fills the void and the holes disapear...to add to this I don't think a void the size of a marker spot would effect anything ..the whole body is a void.
 
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Timbuck said:
Matt sent me a PM asking me how I did it ..:D co's I'd lost track of this thread..anyway this is what i told him.
All I do is drill the board , turn it over place the spots in the holes and push them in with a small rod or drill shank, I put a piece of tape on the front side to stop the spots falling thro' and keeping them flush..Then I drop in a small amount of CA glue to fill the holes behind the spots and before it sets I quickly sand the back of the board and the dust mixes with the glue and fills the void and the holes disapear.
Click to expand...

Thanks again, Timbuck--I'l give it a try.
 
Ken, we were talking about this earlier today and figuring we might use CA to fill the hole... Anyway, thanks for the explanation.

On the original subject of Bruce's MOP dots - our order arrived today and the quality looks very good. The diameters are as requested (3 mm) and, as Matt reported, the thickness varies a lot. I think Ken's method is worth a try.
 
Timbuck said:
Matt sent me a PM asking me how I did it ..:D co's I'd lost track of this thread..anyway this is what i told him.
All I do is drill the board , turn it over place the spots in the holes and push them in with a small rod or drill shank, I put a piece of tape on the front side to stop the spots falling thro' and keeping them flush..Then I drop in a small amount of CA glue to fill the holes behind the spots and before it sets I quickly sand the back of the board and the dust mixes with the glue and fills the void and the holes disapear...to add to this I don't think a void the size of a marker spot would effect anything ..the whole body is a void.
Click to expand...

Excellent... I'ma try it. But I like using big fat dots... I might add some sawdust n glue after it sets.
 
Dino said:
Hey Matt,
Thank you for supporting Bruce. I had recently bought a Tenor Ukulele from him because of some skepticism about who he was/what the quality was going to be like/the shipping cost. Let me tell you...for $150 ($65 for the uke and $85 for the shipping). It's a great instrument. Nice subtle inlays. Bridge was a tie inside the body type bridge. I would by this uke over a $150 Kala or Lanikai!
Click to expand...

Hi! Is the Tenor Ukulele you brought work well until now and is there any problem of it?(like crack up and warp I heard from internet) As I want to buy one from him. Thanks!
 
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