GET INLAID

So I decided after watching my video that I would try the Exacto-knife method of scribing this piece, despite it not working out real well for me in previous attempts. The problem with videos made by guys who’ve been doing this for a quarter of a century is that they make it look so fucking easy. ‘Tisn’t.

But I tried not to press into the wood so hard, keep the blade moving, and swapping out blades when the points got dull. I ended up using 4 of them. Or was it 5?

Even in this small picture, you can see where my knife took off on a tangent. If you blow it up, it’s worse. But I did the best I could do.

Then I commenced to removing the shell from the wood with a razor blade, carefully setting them in the box so I didn’t lose any pieces. While I glued the plate down as a single piece, you’ll notice that it didn’t come up that way. Still not too bad, and the scribing looks okay. But the proof would be in the routing.

The thing about routing is, I love it, even though I suck at it. I find the efficiency of the router to remove wood by spinning in circles and the visible progress mentally satisfying in a way that’s hard to describe. The only thing marring the perfection of the moment is that I cannot stay inside the lines, lines I chalked to make them more visible, even.

I started routing with the big router where it would fit, figuring I would clean up the edges with the dental burrs second. I tried about 3 dental burrs, and still haven’t decided which is best for the task. A couple times I got lost, where lines were close to each other and I wasn’t sure what part I was supposed to rout and what I was supposed to leave. I did take the time to stop, though, pull the router up, and review my drawing before I continued, rather than just keep routing blindly.

Once I got the whole thing as done as it could be from the drawing, I tried to fit pieces in. I decided to start with the big one, because it would be easiest. It required a significant amount of clean-up routing, which I only wanted to do a little at a time, lest I overdo. You can’t put the wood back; it’s like a haircut. You can always take more off. So it was rout, fit, rout, fit, rout, fit, rout some more, and so on. Finally I got the piece in, but not without some visible gaps. I still am baffled as to how this is happening. How can it be too small 3 fittings in a row, and then suddenly too big? I’m not THAT shaky of hand.

The multi-bit/burr deal left the routed cavity with a fairly uneven floor, too.

I laid the big chunk that remained over the cavity, and it floated on top. No part of it wanted to sink in. After all the work I had to do on the flower part, I realized that I would have to do even more, with less margin for error, on the bottom part. Decision time: Do I tweak this one for 2 hours, or do I redo it?

I decided to redo it, fully cognizant of the fact that if this had been an actual guitar neck, I would’ve ruined it. And I realized that there are no do-overs in such a situation. Good thing I’m working in scrap alder, huh?

So I decided to try the method I mentioned before, wherein you paint the wood, glue the shell to it, and scribe around it into the paint, rather than trying to scribe into the wood. After, you just sand the paint off during the sanding process. So I dug out some white acrylic craft paint I had around and painted the wood.

Once it dried, I glued the shell onto it again with some Duco cement. It’s a little off-center. Doh!

Then I scribed around it with 2 different scribes, and I used the Exacto knife in the really skinny bits down among the leaves. It went pretty well, although not quite as easily as I expected, mostly due to excess glue that smooshed out past the edges of the pieces and tripped up my scribe.

I was concerned that I’d scrape up the paint when I pulled up the pieces using a razor blade, but it wasn’t too bad.

To make it easier on myself, I then marked up the sections to be routed out with pencil lines to differentiate them between the parts that were supposed to stay.

For this piece, I think I’ll go back to the routing method I used last time, and just use greater care—handheld and dental burr first, then 1/32” router bit, then a ball-end burr for cleanup. I wasn’t too pleased with the first routing of this pattern. We’ll see. It’ll have to wait, as my Shop-Vac is out of commission for a few days.  I had to clean it after we used it to clean out the swamp cooler Sunday, so I decided to hose it off out back. The spray of the house cut 2 holes right through the filter I need for dry vacuuming. Guess it’s a hand-washable deal. So I have 9 replacements ordered, and they should be on their way.

In other tool news, Scott ordered this nifty magnetic bracelet for me. It holds metal pieces so I don’t ruin the teeth my dentist always tells me are so nice by holding screws and nuts betwixt them.

I test drove it while putting together my new workbench. There’s a place called Harbor Freight Tools we recently learned of, and they had a little folding workbench for 10 bucks. I needed something other than my big workbenches for safely sawing with my new circular saw (pictured stored below the table). The big “work bench” sticker cracks me up; that’s a bit of flair I could’ve easily lived without.

I ended up putting it together twice. The directions were almost useless. What’s the point? I got a nice go-through socket wrench set, too, and it had both metric and standard sockets. That’s not for inlay, but the big orange clamp in the picture is, for when I don’t want to mess with a C-clamp. Got a couple of those, too. I love hardware stores!

So that’s it until the vacuum filters arrive. Then routing, round 2. That’s really where it all goes to hell. Perhaps I can aim for Purgatory this time.