GET INLAID

In the midst of project #4, I took the time to make my sanding block, since my circular saw had arrived and my vacuum filters had not. The saw is great—it cuts all the way through on the first pass. ‘Tis a powerful machine, for sure, and I give it a lot of respect. I think it was a good choice over the table saw, which is way more than I needed. I had vaguely entertained some woodworking fantasies, but I had to stop reading the book. It only provoked questions I really wanted to ask Antiguo, and the fact that I couldn’t…well, it was bringing me down. I decided to put it away. I didn’t need to torture myself. It’s hard enough as it is; I don’t need to actively make it worse.

My new little bench, bought specifically for sawing stuff but it makes a handy side table, too, has wood holders to hold the work as you cut it. That was slick, and I didn’t have to futz with clamps, although it might not have been a bad idea. But I did okay.

Here’s the block after the first cut. I was a little concerned about the green paint on the wood—I don’t know if that was normal upon first use, or a sign that the saw was binding a bit. I still don’t know, but it didn’t feel like it was stuck when I was sawing. I don’t know what kind of wood it is—it was in the unnamed scrap I got from the one guy—but it’s heavy, hard, and thick. It fought the router, too.

A little sanding on the corners to round it for my hand and remove the splinters, et voila! Just add sandpaper.

I think it’s lovely, but I got to thinking it could use a little…embellishment. My first thought was to put my name and maybe some doodles on it in Sharpie. And then I thought, "Hey, I could inlay it!" Practice is practice.

I did a quick and dirty monogram directly on the shell pieces with Sharpie. Sharpie, I discovered, does wipe off shell if you handle it too much, so I had to rewrite it a few times before I was done, but it was good enough for what it was for.

I used my new jeweler’s saw and it was slick. I ended up having to resaw the K 3 times and the N twice—those little bits like to break off. I’m learning, slowly, to scope out the design for potential weak spots and cut in an order to give the weakest pieces the most support during cutting by leaving shell around them as long as possible, but I’m inconsistent at this still.

I used the paint-and-scribe method, which I’d used on the flower project, but hadn’t yet routed.

I went right to routing as soon as I’d scribed and removed the shell, starting with the pointed burr, then trying a rounder one, since the letters were small. I think I can skip the outlining step; I don’t find it helps, and it’s added time. I don’t mind spending the time if it’s going to mean better work, but it’s not in this case.

The bit I started with, also a dental burr, but a rounded one, literally burned the wood. Uh-oh. Not sure what the problem was. You can see the burn marks on the burr, too.

I adjusted the depth and started again, and eventually got it routed.

You’ll notice that the corners aren’t too sharp, so I thought I’d try out my chisels. That worked! And it works at my speed: slow. I used the chisel as I dry-fitted the pieces, as well, both to mark tight spots and to clean those spots up a little at a time.

A little tweaking here and there and the pieces fit. Yay. Only a couple obvious places where I lost control of the router.

A little glue, a little time out in the sun, and it was ready to sand. I used the scrap piece as a makeshift sanding block to sand this one, and I suppose if I wanted to, I could round off the edges of that one, too, and have two. One plus from using the paint-and-scribe method is that the excess superglue tends to lie on top of the paint instead of soaking into the grain of the wood where I spend a lot of time trying to sand out the darkness it imparts. I wondered if that would be the case.

So I got something satisfying out of project #3 anyway, even if it wasn’t project #3, and am proud to have made and marked my own tool, regardless of the fact that it’s about the world’s simplest tool. "Behold! I have taken an ordinary block of wood and made…a block of wood." But how many people have inlaid sanding blocks, I ask you?