Engraving a pickguard

[lamanoditrento]

Hi All,

Does anyone have any experience in engraving an acoustic pickguard? I would like to engrave a pickguard a bit like on a J200 except not that design/style. When I look at the material available on Stemac, it is only 0.6mm, which would seem much too thin to engrave. (LMI a bit thicker at 0.7mm) Any options or advice on how I might approach this/materials suggestion etc would be greatly appreciated.

[demonx]

Can you link to the product you’re talking about? I can’t imagine any pickguard material only half a mm thick.

Most hand engraving is done with a tool that is simply a metal spike, there are different shaped and angled spikes and you simply drag them across the surface.

Me personally, I don’t have the skill for that so I’d draw it in CAD and do it on CNC with a similar style cutting bit to what would be used as a hand tool.

[lamanoditrento]

I was looking at this https://www.stewmac.com/Materials_and_S ... lanks.html

What material do you normally use Allan?

[demonx]

I was looking at this https://www.stewmac.com/Materials_and_S ... lanks.html

What material do you normally use Allan?

I checked the link and you’re spot on, it really is that thin!

I guess now I think about it an acoustic pickguard should be super thin to limit its interference on the top vibration.

Something that thin on the CNC I would not use a standard routing/engraving bit, I have a spring loaded diamond engraver I use on odd jobs and I’d do it that way.

Doing it by hand you’d still use the scribe type tool I mentioned earlier.

To answer what I use, I don’t put pickguards on my acoustics which would be why I’m not familiar with the range of materials, I have put pickguards on some electrics and it’s been the thicker two/three ply type stud which you wouldn’t put on a acoustic.