Inlay artist

Besides Chuck Moore, who are the great ukulele inlay artists? Is anyone using CNC machines for inlay work or are most people doing them manually? Does it matter?

Check out Grit Laskin's work at http://williamlaskin.com/.
Does it matter if you use CNC? For me, the beauty of Chuck Moore's work is that he does it all the traditional way, by hand.

mketom said:

Does it matter if you use CNC?

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While it takes skill to make any inlay, I think the true art is in the traditional method. CNC inlay work often looks "cleaner" or more "true to life" than manual inlay work but there is something about true craftsmanship that, to me, trumps computer work every time.

Thanks for the link; I'm checking that out now.

I think Larry Robinson, Grit Laskin, and Jimmi Wingert are among the best inlay artists. I don't think Grit takes commissions, but I'm sure Larry and Jimmi would be happy to work on ukuleles.

UU member kekani does inlay work. I have heard that he does work for a bunch of builders and he builds himself. I remember MGM had one of his ukes not long ago that had some crazy inlay on it.

I love work by hand but to say its harder, Coming from a machinist background I challenge anyone to write the program to have the CNC make the cut you need to do an inlay and then tell me it is easy. Then set the machine up to do what you want. Once all the tools and are all zeroed and heights set, and a fixture is in and the program is running like you like, then and only then would I call what is left, easy. If you don't agree then try it yourself. Then you are able to do one design and that's it. Change the design and it all starts all over again. A CNC is great for running many of the same thing. To go through all that to make one, would not be worth the cost. I would say if your doing one offs it is faster and easier to do it by hand.