Head Inlay

I decided to inlay a "W" on the head.  I bought an inlay blank 1"x2" and traced the pattern I wanted.  Then I cut it out using a special blade I bought for my coping saw that is omni-directional.  It was pretty easy to do.

I used an X-acto knife to trace the pattern onto the head and then decided it would be easiest to use the same knife to clean out the space for the inlay.  Most people use a router to route out the space, but this seemed risky to me.  It maybe took a while longer, but it was relatively painless.

Here's the inlay sitting in place before gluing:

To glue it in place, I mixed regular wood glue with dust from the walnut wood, hoping the fill the gaps so that the stain would look good.  I can see the glue in the gaps now so I'm not sure it worked too well.

I used the same wood filler as I did on the walnut back and sides of the body and then stained it with the same stain.  Before staining, I taped off the inlay and the rest of the neck.  Here's the taped step and the stained finish.