GET INLAID

Monday, then, was finishing day. I love 3-day weekends.

After sitting all night, the superglue had filled in some of the gaps, but not entirely, because superglue shrinks as it dries.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with that yet, but I started sanding, first with 80 grit, then 120. At the 120-grit level, I realized I was making a lot of clean sawdust, uncontaminated with the white paint and pencil lead, and decided to move some of the sawdust over and smoosh (that’s a technical term) it into the gaps around the shell, since I still had a lot of sanding to do. You can see the gaps easily in this picture—they look brighter than the surrounding wood because of the dried superglue.

Here it is with the sawdust/superglue “spackle” I put in there.

While that dried, I decided to get a jump on my next project by gluing the next pattern to shell. Have I mentioned how superglue is NOT my friend??? So I moved over to the other half of the bench, picked through my pieces to find ones that’ll fit the pattern, and started gluing the stuff on them and setting them down on the bench, in a move so retarded I astonished even myself. Because 5 minutes later I realized that I wanted to move those pieces, which were now well stuck to the bench, because I used superglue. So I pried at them awhile, with no joy on one, and I got half of the other one up before it broke.

I grabbed the piece I could, and the other two will remain permanently on the bench as a reminder to not do anything that stupid again. A damned waste of shell, that is!

So I cut out more of those pieces of the pattern, found 2 more pieces of shell big enough (I was expecting to be totally out of the size I would need, but I lucked out) and I kept gluing, now on wax paper, moving them slightly every minute or so to keep them from sticking too much to the wax paper.

I left those pieces to dry after I soaked up the excess superglue pooling on their tops with scrap paper, in the hopes that it would allow them to give up the paper during sanding more easily next time. We’ll see if that actually happens. By then, the original piece had dried, and I went after it again to get rid of the excess glue and sawdust with the 80 and the 120 paper.

The bottom white arm had paper on it that was totally stubborn. That was the one I had screwed up on in the first place, and had to put a new pattern piece on top of the bad one I ripped off. That’s 2 layers of paper and superglue on the shell, and I think that’s why it was so recalcitrant. But eventually I got it.

I then moved up to 240, then 400, and finishing up with a 1500 grit microfinishing paper. In this way, I learned the importance of different levels of sandpaper, and the pure joy of a glass-like finish. Just running my fingers over it made me happy. I couldn’t believe you could actually polish something by scratching it with sandpaper. Amazing! (I am easily amused; I admit it.)

So much for keeping my bench clean while actually working!

I then spent a ridiculous amount of time masking the inlay, because my plan was just to paint the wood around it. In real wood, I’d finish it properly, and have 2 books now to tell me how to do that, but since this was just practice, I just wanted to cover up the less-than-lovely particle board. Then I took it outside and spray-painted it.

While it dried, I decided to take apart my bench vise and clean it, because has been sticky and the crank doesn’t want to turn easily. I stuck it in the sink with some Dawn soap, and then cleaned it with a toothbrush. Really. I dried it, oiled it, and stuck it outside to drain and dry with the paint. And I cleaned my workbench. (At this point, you’re wishing I wasn’t quite so faithful a chronicler of this process, aren’t you?)

It took some picking at the tape and some cleanup where the paint seeped into the seams to get it ship-shape. I used my fingernail, which ended up being very unpleasant and painful after awhile, because my nails are supershort for guitar playing, but I feared any other implement would scratch the shell I’d worked so hard to sand smooth, and now that it was done, I didn’t want to go backwards. I’ll take my lessons learned and apply them to the next project.

It’s not perfect, and you can see where I fudged my gaps, but I think it looks pretty good for a first try. I’m quite pleased, because I learned how to use my tools, and I know I can do it, at least these parts. Everything from here on out is just improvement of technique, at least when it comes to cutting, routing, and sanding. And I still have all 10 fingers!

Ta da!

And here’s a second view, so you can see how the angle of light changes the colors, particularly in the MOP. It looks better under natural light, rather than washed out by a flash, but you can get a sense of it, anyway.

It’s a paperweight on my desk at work now. And it makes me smile every time I look at it.