GET INLAID

I haven’t posted in quite some time, because I haven’t been doing any work since the last post.  It’s hard for me to do any inlay work evenings.  Between trying to get a walk in, dinner, watch TV with Scott, perhaps some guitar, and the fact that I don’t have the concentration skills I need to do it right that late in the day, I find it’s best to work on it on the weekends when I’m fresh and have lots of time.  That’s the plan for this weekend, as last weekend I was in San Francisco, and next weekend I’ll be on a very large boat traveling between L.A. and Ensenada.  So I’ll have new posts after this weekend.

However, my thirst for sawdust is unabated, and I’ve kept the DTs at bay with the reading of my newly arrived Woodcraft magazine.  I ordered the sample copy, because it was a freebie, and I thought it might be educational, since I am learning both inlay and the attendant woodworking skills simultaneously, possessing neither at the outset.

The editor’s note at the front of the issue was a list:  "You know you’re an old woodworker when…"  So many of them applied to Antiguo; he would’ve loved it.  I laughed, because I recognized him.  As if that weren’t enough, later in the issue was an article about a guy who became a woodworker when his dad died.  He couldn’t give up the expensive (and still being paid for) shop machine they’d bought and brought home when his father died the next day at the age of 52.  In the intervening years, he’s become a respected crafstman, and then started his own woodworking school.  He’s created an amazing career.  However, he said, "I don’t know that my path would have taken the direction that it took.  Unfortunately, where I am today is something (my father) would have dreamed about his whole life.  But it probably never would have happened to me if he had been alive."

I have had that thought so many times during this process.  If Antiguo were still here, I wouldn’t be doing this.  It never even occurred to me.  But I like the feeling that I’m his legacy, and working with the tools, learning about his work in a deeper way than I ever did before, brings me a calm, a healing peace, that I don’t seem to achieve anywhere else currently.  And for that, I am grateful.

Sunday I got back on the horse (the sawhorse, that is), and worked on some shell. I was alert, instead of tired like I was Friday night when I broke those 3 pieces. I was very, very careful, and tried to really look at the piece I had and determine which side would be most advantageous to cut off first, leaving greater support for the remaining piece.

I also discovered, quite by accident (as it often happens), a technique for avoiding breakage of the thin pieces. It’s a little clumsy yet and I hope to refine it, but initial results are good. I realized that the clamp was right out—I needed to be moving the piece as I cut it, which takes quite a bit of finger strength. I also figured out that my attempts to brace the piece I was sawing on both ends was actually putting pressure on the far end, more than likely contributing to the breakage. What I ended up doing was bracing the backside of the sawblade against the wood of the bench pin and sawing away from me, stopping from time to time to pull the shell closer to me so that all the already-cut section was firmly and flatly supported on the bench pin under my fingers. The only weight on the remaining piece was that of the sawing itself, and since I kept taking up the slack, it got smaller and smaller. Then I would angle the saw from the usual perpendicular to a slant as I finished the cut. I remembered that from one of my books, and it really helped. The finishing of the cut wasn’t as abrupt that way, and less prone to breakage.

Here’s another partially finished piece. I notice that the paua is a “dirtier” and heavy sawdust than the green abalone. It tends to hang around.

I took a break at this point and glued up 3 more pieces to replace the 3 I’d broken in the first round. I didn’t want to bother if the sawing went badly again, because I might have had to look into different sawblades.

I can see that even though these design lines are thinner than in the first two projects, they’re still not thin enough to allow for a perfect abutment of pieces. I will try the stencil idea Phaedrous gave me next time and see if I don’t do better. I also can see that my shaky hand drawing results in less than smooth sawing. I’m not sure what to do about that yet. Maybe I need to get one of those French curve dealies to trace around for vines and whatever else I can come up with.

Next up were the 4 flowers. They were quite the test for my sawing skills, and I’d say I scored a C-. Maybe a D+. My ability to turn inside corners by “marching in place” with the saw as I slowly turned the handle (as recommended in my books) leave much to be desired in tight corners like these flowers have between the petals, and I put some nicks and notches in places I didn’t want them. Of course, those notches were in places really hard to smooth out with a small file. The first flower I did I sawed in sections, but that can leave edges that need to be filed. The second one, as you can see in the picture below, I did in one more or less continuous cut.

I broke a couple blades cutting the second pair, mostly due to my poor cornering—the blade wasn’t moving, but by god, my hand was! But I am pleased to report that I’m now wearing out the blades before I’m breaking them in most cases. That seems like some kind of progress. MOP is harder work than the abalone and the paua; I don’t know if that’s because of its consistency, or the fact that it’s thicker than either of the other two shell types I’ve got. I guess next time I order it, I’ll try to keep it to 1 mm; I think the MOP I have is 1.5 mm. More consistency in thickness will help me at sanding time, too.
I got so focused on my cutting at one point that I forgot to stop and went right into the finger that was holding down the piece of shell. Note to self: Stop sawing when you hit meat. I think my guitar callus saved me. It broke the skin, but there was no bleeding. All I can say is, thank goodness I wasn’t using power tools, or my career as a guitarist would be over before it barely started.

I still have the 3 replacement pieces to cut, but their glue was still tacky when I was ready to finish up for the day. I don’t know if I’ll have time to work on it this week again, as I have open mic tomorrow night, and I don’t seem to do so well sawing after a long day at work; my brain is fatigued. And then I’m in San Francisco Saturday and in transit a good chunk of Sunday. So we’ll see.

Friday night I attempted some sawing.  I did 4 pieces.  I ended up breaking 3 of the 4, usually when I was almost finished, of course.  This is why I wanted to try a vine pattern–because I feared this is exactly how it would work out with these very thin pieces. I decided I’d screwed up enough for one night, put a fresh blade in my saw and went back in the house.  I’ll try again today, but if it still goes badly, I’ll think about getting some extra-fine blades and see if that makes a difference when I’m doing thin pieces. 

I decided to take some time after lunch the other day to glue the pattern to the shell. I love living so close to work that I can take an hour lunch and actually accomplish something at home. I got all the paua done in 20 minutes or so.

When I got home, I reviewed my handiwork and found that on a couple of pieces the lines bled.

Since my goal this time was more precision cutting through thinner lines, that wasn’t going to work. So I decided I’d just redo those pieces. I realized that I’d made the problem myself by touching and retouching the paper with sticky fingers and what have you, trying to get it positioned properly. Every time I scraped over the line, I contributed to this problem. Doh! I realized that if I put the glue down first and then placed the piece of paper on the shell with the tip of my Exacto knife, I got precision placement, kept my fingers superglue-free, and kept my lines nice and clean. This is piece #3, which was the fuzzier one on the left in the picture above. Much better now.

Putting the glue down first, though, you get to see how the shell will really look once it’s sanded to a gloss and finished. It’s beautiful. It’s visually dusty when dry because of the scratches made when cutting the shell into blanks.

I decided to try to get the patterns of the 3 pieces I ended up redoing off immediately. I haven’t bothered with all the scrap pieces, but these were 3 untouched piece. The solvent works slowly and it took many baths and much scraping to get the gooey superglue and paper off the pieces. I could’ve just put another pattern on top some day, but I’ve done that before, and it added probably 20 minutes of sanding to that one little piece. It was a pain, and I don’t want to do it again. Nor do I want to do the clean-up again; it was slow and messy. So I’ll just have to try not to stick patterns to shell unless I’m certain I want them to stay there.

I didn’t try to do it this way, but it worked out that the flower part of the design fit two apiece on the MOP. Very economical. Sawing should ensue tonight, and hopefully routing on Sunday.