Pearl and Abalone Inlay Blanks

Each piece was beautiful, without marks,cracks etc. They were quite easy to cut and shape with a jeweler's saw and disc sander. After finishing, waxing and buffing they displayed a rich patina. This was my first shot at inlaying this type of material and I was delighted with the result. Highly recommended.

I can get most anything I need to make an acoustic guitar of which I have made five (for my grand children)from stew mac. great delivery & more important the technical advice I have been given over the last five years. No problems.

I had never inlayed pearl or abalone. I tried several different techniques, but in general, it was easier than I thought to get started. Like any craft, it takes time and practice... I ordered the figured pearl and green abalone. The pearl was consistent in depth and very pleasing to look at. The abalone was very nice, but with a high degree of variability in quality and coloring piece to piece. This is not a criticism, just and indicator of working with natural materials. If you are going for a specific look, you may need to buy extra abalone to get the piece you want... Also scribing lines into the pearl was easy, while scribing lines into the abalone was more challenging as the high figuration tended to chip in spots when scribing. BTW: the figured pearl makes an excellent truss rod cover! Overall, very pleased with my first go at it...

nice assortement and sizes with same thickness thruought

This was used for the inlay on my F-5 mandolin and it is beautiful. The pieces are about 1/16th thick so glue them to a thin piece of wood( use elmers glue then throw the finished piece in some water and let it sit) and you can put quite alot of pressure and really move with your cuts. Also a ounce of shell isn't that impressive once you see it but it does cover quite abit of area. Decent stuff

Good stuff, a little thin.

Good quality shell with dark greens and blues and whitey whites! Engraves well too ~ Beau Hannam Guitars ~

great stuff. super consistent and beautiful.

Inlay is time-consuming and exacting. You might as well use the best materials you can buy. The pearl and abalone shell at Stew-Mac is exactly that.

So far the blanks have been fine...consistent texture and good color. Pieces are big enough for my purposes,