Removing the inlays

The inlays need some attention. The first 6 have started to lift a little and there are noticeable gaps around the edges. While the surrounding wood has probably shrunk over the years, looking closely reveals a rather sloppy inital job - corners are not consistently rounded and edges seem to be very rough. The old epoxy they used to fill the gaps has stretched too. Heat is the recommended method to remove these but since celluloid is flammable I have to use indirect heat - thus the hairdryer.

The last two I'm going to leave alone. They're still seated nicely and weren't in as bad of shape as the others.

The dark stuff on the edges is not wood. It's the colored epoxy they used to fill the gaps around the inlays when they were installed. The edges of the inlays themselves were not smooth at all which didn't help the final aesthetics either.

Oops, forgot to use the flash. Anyway, here they are cleaned with edges sanded smooth. I rounded all the corners too. I could replace them all with newer material but they actually look really good now and have a nice vintage-looking yellowish tint. People will go to all kinds of lengths to get that relic'd look.

Sanded and cleaned the inlay cavities to get rid of the previous glue residue. Now just need to wait for the FedEx guy to deliver more tools and supplies before I can continue.