Hey... thanks for you comment... have a great 2020 too!

Thank you and good luck.

Do it.. its fun.

Great tip, thanks.

I stop at 80 on the grinder but then i inlay the pieces into guitars which are sanded up to 240 before being lacquered. If you are not inlaying and just making jewellery for example, you should just keep going up the grits till you are happy. If you want them shiny then go 80-120-240-400-800-1000-2000 then use some kind of buffing compound.

Hey. I use a 3m 4521

@@LeddingtonGuitars thank you

Just that i'm wearing a very good mask and have good dust extraction... you could use water but it might get messy and not so great for tools. And even if you used water, you probably should still wear a mask. I use the 3M 4251.

I still have them...

Hi Stanley... this is a common occurrence when the wood shrinks due to either being to wet to begin with or having dried out due to not being nourished regularly with oil... i suggest you try oiling the fingerboard first and then if they are still too high after a few days you can sand them flush to the fingerboard with a small metal file. Check out my website www.leddingtonguitars.com for details on care and maintenance and for oil that i offer. Drop me a line there if you need any more help... happy to guide you through it all.

On the belt sander? 80g.

Its a Dremel tool with a cut off wheel attachment.

Do you mean what i use to mark? Or how i decide where to mark and cut? If the former i just use a sharpie. If the latter, it's a bit more instinctive. I choose a relatively flat and thick bit and not too big as the shell is curved so to get it flat you have to remove a lot of material, the more curved it is the more material you will loos flattening out both sides. Best to work with as small pieces as possible, but that depends of course on how big you need your blank.

@@LeddingtonGuitars so basically size of blanks depends on size of shell and how curve is it...and thank you for explaining ☺️... I thought there would be some template or any method for choosing flat parts

@@ashishrathod293 Exactly... the more curved the shell is the more material you will loose flattening it out on the grinder. So smaller is better. But if you need a large blank for a large inlay, you have to compromise. To be perfectly honest this process is really only for special bits of shell you cant get in blank form. There are plenty of suppliers who sell pre-made flat blanks.

@@LeddingtonGuitars yes, pre-made blanks are available online like stewmac but here in india we dont get pre-made blanks locally, its not quite popular here. Although I went to Goa(place in india) where i accidentally came accross a shop who sells shell for really cheap (approx-2$ USD) per shell which is roughly around 6 inch in length...so its quite reasonably cheap

@@ashishrathod293 Very cool. Good luck... i hope i was of help.

From all over the place... ebay, flea markets... try knofe makers fairs too.

It sure will, but speed is nice and masks work.

I think you mean the Dremel.

Sounds fine here mate.

Sorry no... i don't have stock. Also i believe abalone is now listed with CITES meaning its potentially illegal to trade internationally.

@@LeddingtonGuitars Hello, can you plz tell me how can we take out mother of pearl layer from shell or mussels. Which machine and technique we can use for it...

@@amitjaiswal1218 I'm not sure totally understand... but the video contains all my techniques for processing shell to use as inlay or jewellery etc.