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Meet Amy Hopkins, of Stringed Instrument Repair in New Freedom, PA. Amy has designed the artwork for the inlay on this bass, and she did this stunning Dragon inlay on the peghead!

Amy Hopkins has been working with Jeff Hostetter at the Stringed Instrument Repair shop in New Freedom PA since 1985. Before that she was a carpenter, doing historic renovation on log cabins, timber frame barns and houses. The shop is mostly repair with a small retail. Amy and Jeff do some custom building in between the repair work. Jeff built banjos in the 70's and 80's and Amy got interested in doing inlay work by doing the banjo fingerboards. Pictured is Amy with her pet milk cow, Masha.

Preparing the Peghead Inlay

Amy provided a few of photos of the peghead inlay process. In the first photos, she is cutting out the peghead shape and gluing on the rosewood peghead veneer. You can see the drawing at the top of the pattern, and some of the inlay sections are shown. Also visible is a piece of abalone with inlay pieces marked out and ready to be cut out, by hand.

The Fingerboard Inlay

Here's a shot of the completed fingerboard inlays. The inlay work on the fingerboard was done by Mark Swanson in Grand Rapids, MI from the artwork provided by Amy.