GET INLAID

As a result of my e-mail conversation with Larry Robinson, I decided to backtrack on project 2. He told me that it would be easier to rout accurately in hardwoods, as long as my bits were sharp, which they ought to be still. So if I was going to rout a new piece of wood anyway (which would require scribing the design on the new piece as well), I figured I had no excuse for not fixing the cursed Piece #2, and so Wednesday night I made a new one. I’ll probably end up routing the piece I’d already scribed, just for the practice, before tackling the maple.  I feel better now; I won’t have to live with the shame of my laziness forever.

I’d ordered something called a transfer marker, which was supposed to solve all my paper/superglue/pattern problems. The theory behind it was that you would put a pattern created with a toner-using copier on the shell, run the marker over it, and it would transfer to the shell, obviating the need for the paper pattern stuck to the shell. I just needed to remember to put it on the back of the shell, since the way it worked, you’d get a mirror image of the pattern. Sounds brilliant, non?

There’s a big damn difference between theory and practice.

So I put the pattern on the backside of the shell, using a little tape so it wouldn’t move once I started marking it.

I can see immediately that this is not going to be the great savior I’d hoped for. The pattern is bleeding with the moisture. A feathered, blotchy pattern isn’t going to do much for my aspirations of precision. Lesson learned? There are no shortcuts.

As I peel up the pattern, I see that I’m correct in my assessment of total suckage. The transfer is both blotchy and faint. The marker was a waste of time and money.

So I went back to the superglue/paper pattern method in the end, and managed to do it without gluing my fingers together or the shell to the workbench. She can learn!

I sawed it, and did a pretty good job for having been away from it for over a week. I also tried out a new piece of equipment, which is a aquarium pump with some tubing. It’s a lot quieter than the mini shop vac. It blows instead of sucks, and that may become an annoyance as I blow shell dust all over, but until it’s visible, I’m going to pretend I don’t know that.

I did a test run of arranging the pieces, including my new Piece #2, on tape because they move if you breathe on them wrong. It’s close, but not perfect.

Then I moved it off the tape onto the maple. I attempted to stick it to the wood using DUCO cement, as recommended in my inlay book. That stuff stinks. It also didn’t hold up so well, and the pieces came loose.

I made my orientation marks, and then let it sit a bit.

Then, being me, I couldn’t not touch it and thought I’d start scribing. That was a dumb thought. This is when I found out that the DUCO wasn’t holding, and I ended up having to rearrange the whole thing again. I tried sprayed adhesive, which dried too fast. I need it to be sticky enough to hold it, but not so fast-setting that I can’t adjust them. So I went with good old Elmer’s, and stopped touching it for the night. We’ll see tomorrow how that worked.

Then I cleaned up my bench and checked out my new piece of abalam. It’s called donkey’s ear MOP, and it’s quite a bit bigger than the blanks I’ve been using, but feels like the same material, because it is—100% shell. Don’t know yet what I’m going to use it for, but it’s cool.