2 1/2 hour apprenticeship
So Friday night I sat down and watched the first of the 3-video Inlay Techniques with Larry Robinson set. He’s the guy who wrote one of my books and with whom I e-mailed a little bit. It was well worth watching, and I took quite a few notes, but I don’t think I need to own the set. I will, however, be renting the other 2.
The video was 2.5 hours long, and very useful on several fronts. Probably first and foremost, it showed me that I do in fact have the techniques down. I’m doing just what he’s doing. I’m just not doing it with 25 years’ experience. I found that very encouraging, though—I’ve got the basics, now it’s just a matter of practice. I wasn’t doing anything horribly wrong.
Except using the wrong saw. The saw I bought from Stew-Mac was this one. And I have found that I have a really hard time getting the blade taut enough. And a sloppy blade is hard to control, because it’s always bending. So that might be part of my sawing accuracy issues. He had said in his book, and repeated in the video, that it should "ping" when you thwack it if it’s tight enough. Mine doesn’t ping so much; it kind of goes “pppbbbbffffttt.” I’ve futzed with it over and over again and not gotten it much better.
Robinson uses one like this. He suggest just putting the sawblade in, and then pulling back the bottom piece until it’s tight enough. Eureka! I ordered it within minutes of finishing the video. Less than 3 months of learning this stuff and already I’m replacing tools. He also showed a trick for when you’ve got the blade through a piece of shell and are trying to tighten it, wherein you squeeze the jaws a bit while you tighten the blades, and then when you let off the pressure, it tightens up even more, which allowed me to get a much more taut blade in the saw I have. I even got a little ping out of that baby.
I’ve been on the lookout for an 8HB pencil, and haven’t been able to find any, even online. But in the video he mentioned a drafting lead. So I’ll have to consider that. I wanted a sharp pencil for scribing, but I think I’m going to give the Exacto knife option a try again, having watched him do it. I think I might’ve been pressing harder than I needed to.
Other tips and tricks I picked up from the video:
Acetone will remove the paper from the shell. Acetone is way cheaper than the superglue remover I buy for $15/oz. from Stew-Mac. I used it to reclaim some shell bits after I got tired sawing yesterday. It’s still messy, stinky work, but much more effective than trying to soak it in that other stuff. That’ll be a post in itself.
He uses .060” shell. I’ve been using .040”. The thicker is more expensive, but I’m wondering if it isn’t worth it, because it seems much sturdier for its thickness—less breakage. He showed this picture of a curlicue he did as a single piece. It blew my mind.
He sets up and glues his inlays into a single plate or several plates (in the case of a large project) of smaller pieces, and then inlays the whole thing at once. I haven’t done that, but will. On smaller plates, he often does this gluing on a flexible metal wood scraper. Bending the scraper, a la an ice cube tray, will pop the plate off the scraper, even if the superglue stuck.
He also showed that the air bubbles in the superglue once dry were just part of the process, and usually showed up, and what to do to take care of them.
When he put his piece in the routed cavity the first time, it didn’t fit either. And when he was done, he evaluated his piece and showed the imperfections. I don’t feel so bad about having the same issues if the expert has to deal with the same stuff.
