Preventing off-color sawdust contamination

[Rich Friedeman]

I finished my first guitar recently (thanks for the nice feedback) and I'm applying a critical eye to it. One of the things that bugs me is wood discoloration around the headstock. I have a mahogany neck with an ebony headplate. I cut the headstock to final shape using a router and a cnc-ed template then cleaned things up with some very light sanding. By the time that was done, there were little flecks of ebony sawdust embedded in the pores of the mahogany underneath it, very visible in the edge grain. If I compare the edge of the headstock to the back of it (or to the edge of the body, which is the same wood and grain orientation), the ebony-fouled edge is noticeably darker.

How can I prevent that? Do I have to fill/seal the headstock before gluing the headplate? Cutting them to shape as a single operation certainly feels more precise. What do you do?

Thanks,
Rich

[Rodger Knox]

Don't sand, scrape. The Carruth scraper from StewMac is the tool for that.
Now they call it the ultimate scraper:
http://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/Ty ... raper.html

[Barry Daniels]

Blow it out with compressed air.

[David King]

Or erase it out with a white gum eraser.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010GH ... 1944687602

[Bryan Bear]

Or erase it out with a white gum eraser.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010GH ... 1944687602

I love tips like this. Something I never would have thought to try but seems so obvious once someone mentions it.

[Rich Friedeman]

All excellent ideas. Thank you.

The next one is going to be beautiful

[Barry Daniels]

The eraser would work on the surface, but the compressed air will work better on the sawdust inside the pores.