GET INLAID

After I finished the smaller piece I headed back to the bigger design to start sanding it. It was then that I discovered that one point (the top one) of the abalam was not seated all the way into the cavity, and when I pushed in on it, it broke the tip into a couple pieces, and then they fell into the bottom of the cavity, considerably lower than the rest, while still-wet glue oozed out. Oops.

It was a big problem, and essentially ruined the piece, but I was still riding high on the success of the smaller one, so I decided to take it through the end of the process anyway. I filled gaps with ebony dust, soaked them with some thin superglue and let it sit overnight.

Sunday, then, I went back to the sanding, and found that I was not happy with the way the abalam was sanding.

Let’s talk about the abalam. I purchased just one piece, and I am grateful now that’s all I bought. Sometimes cheapness can transmogrify into accidental foresight. I don’t know that I will buy abalam again. What it is is a laminate of very thin layers of shell, shell that normally would end up in the trash because it’s too thin to sell as blanks. They color-match it, laminating the thin sheets with epoxy so that you can get bigger pieces that are supposedly consistent throughout the piece, and it is supposed to saw and sand just like real shell. This process allows for bigger pieces of shell, and allows producers to get more out of an abalone.

I will admit the possibility that it is my own lack of skill working with it that caused me problems, but I can only say what I experienced, and it wasn’t great. The layers have a tendency to flake and break, like mica, which is the problem I had with the break I had, and they didn’t want to reglue. And while it saws and sands easily, it doesn’t sand well, to my eye. It didn’t shine up like real shell after the 6-step sanding process, and the wood dust seems to get caught in I-don’t-know-what. Crevices between layers? The epoxy between the layers? I don’t know, but the abalam had these nasty gray streaks in some spots, and it was holding on to the ebony dust for dear life. The only way I could remove the streaks is by rubbing over the whole thing with straight acetone.

Ultimately, because of the break on the one point, this piece was moribund before I finished it, so I didn’t do a lot of clean-up of it after I finished sanding, and you can see the fairly obvious edge of superglue around it. My efforts to fill the gaps were less than successful. There are little air bubbles in it, too, that I would’ve cleaned out with an Exacto knife, but didn’t bother on this one, since it was a goner anyway.

I sanded it, but didn’t oil it. I’ve added it to the collection of “learning experiences” on my bench. I only sanded around the design because the clamp was in the way, but I like seeing the difference between untouched ebony and sanded on the same piece. Have I mentioned how much that tickles me?

And with that, Project #4 comes to an end. It took awhile, but I’ve seen some real progress in my skills through it. Next up, the art deco design.  I’m excited. I was thinking of buying reconstituted obsidian for her hair and the shadows on her face, but I have this ebony, so I might just use that. I know it shines up nicely. I picked up the proper thickness of maple for her body. As I’m envisioning it right now, everything is wood except for the sun she’s holding, which would be MOP and gold MOP. That might be unbalanced, with all the wood below and the shell above. Her body could be white MOP, too, though that might be weirdly cold for a skin tone. I’ll have to think about it some more. I will be busy playing host to my folks over the holiday weekend, so I probably won’t get back to work on inlay until the following weekend.

My inlay work on Saturday was delayed due to a wee nap, but when I woke up I was rarin’ to rout. Or rather, while I had sanding to do, I thought it best to do the routing when I was most alert.

I scribed the piece again and chalked it. I’ve got this part down, at least on designs with straight lines. (When I go back to curves, I’ll be cursing the scribing again, I’m pretty sure.)

Because clamping these small pieces of wood limits my mobility with the router, I’ve been using double-sided carpet tape to secure the wood to the workbench. However, this new ebony I got has just enough curve to it that the tape didn’t touch the workbench. So I grabbed a piece of 1/16” maple and stuck it to that first, then clamped the maple to the bench. That worked without a hitch, and I had no clamps in my way. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

As I write this, I can’t even remember how I managed to break the shell design like this. Maybe when I was taking it off the wood post-scribing? Anyway, it broke simply at the joint at piece #1; however, it pulled a layer of the abalam off between pieces 2 and 3 when it broke. I glued the pieces back together, but I was not thrilled, as the layers didn’t really want to glue very well.

The routing went okay, but not great. I still need to work at steadying my hand, as there were a couple places where I just lost control and took a bite out of the wood where I didn’t want to.

It fit pretty well on first fitting, and I had to do only a little bit of cleanup around the inner shape.

A little glue, and the design is in, ready to set aside for drying.

While that cured, I worked on sanding the smaller design. I sand through 6 different grits, starting with 80 and finishing with 2000. I’ve spared you pictures of each step. I am quite pleased with the way this one turned out; it’s the best one I’ve done so far. Here’s a picture of it inside after a single coat of Tung oil was put on, post-sanding.

Here it is out in natural (and slightly overpowering) light and with a second coat of oil, although it’s hard to photograph and do the colors, especially in the MOP, justice. One nice thing about doing small pieces like this is that I can hold it in my hand and turn it and watch the colors in the shell play. Love that.

This was the piece where I filled in the empty spaces with ebony prior to inlay, allowing me to rout a single continuous cavity, and the ebony did sand down faster than the shell, so despite it being the highest material in the plate, it didn’t pose any problems. One mistake I did make with that is that I stuck the patterns to the wood without paying any attention to the orientation, and the piece in the center, and the 2 triangles on either side of it, have their grain going horizontally instead of vertically. That is easily corrected in subsequent efforts. And look at how that ebony shines! I cannot get over the fact that using sandpaper can make wood so smooth it shines; it delights me. And with that, Project 4a is complete. Tomorrow: The end, if not the completion, of 4b.

I had glued my designs onto the new ebony Friday so that I was ready to scribe this weekend, Sunday as it turned out. Again, the scribing went well because it was all straight lines. The trickiest bit was the small triangles in the larger design.

Then I decided that I would trim off the excess ebony to keep it out of my way, and use it for something else later. I pondered whether a circular saw was rather too much tool for the job, but I don’t have a bandsaw and the idea of doing the hacksaw thing seemed like too much work.

The thing about me is, I have these inklings of impending doom, but I tend to disregard them, much to my eventual chagrin. This was one of those times. I’d barely started cutting and I heard a lot of scary noise, so I stopped the saw, fearing I’d run aground, right into the metal table leg, although I couldn’t imagine how. When I pulled the saw away, I saw this:

The metal noise I heard were chips of ebony pinging off Scott’s fender, as his car was parked in the garage for a change. (Shhh…don’t tell!) It took out big chunks, and, as you may notice in the photo, cracked along a grain line all the way up to the larger of the two designs. How bad was it?

Oh, about this bad:

Note to self: Do not use circular saw on 5/32” stock. Antiguo told me that he learned to pay attention when something didn’t feel right while he was working in the shop. Invariably, his spidey-sense was right, and a tool was about to malfunction in a dangerous way. I need to start listening to my misgivings and develop those instincts. Ebony is somewhat spendy, and I ruin enough of it through lack of skill; I don’t need to be wrecking it through stupidity, too.

So since the smaller design, which was also the less complicated to rout, was intact, I flipped the other broken piece over and stuck the bigger design to it and set it aside to work on the smaller design.

Here’s the cavity after the first pass with the router bit. It’s not too shabby. Some cleanup to do, especially in the points of the star, with smaller dental burrs.

Here’s the first test fitting. About half of it is in, so I had to do some more clean-up in the sections under 5 and 8 with a couple different burrs. I worked slowly, keeping the vacuum and the router running while stopping periodically to try the fit again. I didn’t want to overdo.

Then I filled it with glue, stuck the piece in (as it was just a single plate), and pressed down with some jeweler’s files to get it to seat properly, threw some wax paper over the top, and then clamped it with a piece of walnut.

While that was curing, I turned my attention to the bigger design and scribed it again. Then I went right into the routing, which was a little more complicated because I was cutting out what amounted to multiple adjoining cavities. When I tried to fit it in, it was clearly off. You can see major gaps throughout, and especially inside piece #3.

I decided that while I could probably get away with more than I imagine because I’m working in ebony and superglue dries dark, especially with a dark ground behind it, I decided it wasn’t good enough. I can’t half-ass it if I really want to learn how to do this, and ever get to doing my own guitar. So I pulled the design off and glued it for the 4th time onto the raggedy piece of ebony I cut off this piece earlier in the day. I’ll scribe it again, and I’ll do it again. I’ll keep doing it until I get it right. I did an acceptable job on the small design, so I know it’s not impossible. And I know I was a little mentally and physically tired by the time I got to the bigger, more complicated design, so I probably should’ve quit while I was ahead and waited to do the more difficult routing when I was fresh. The good news is, the replacement router base Stew-Mac sent me didn’t give me a moment’s trouble; all problems were solely the result of operator error.

Next up, I’ll sand the small design. That should be interesting. I’ve got several levels of shell and wood. It’ll take a long time to get it all flush, as you’re only supposed to rout to the depth of the thinnest material. Another reason to buy your materials in a single size wherever possible. And then I’ll try routing the bigger design, but I think that will wait until Saturday, when I’m well-rested. I can sand anytime this week, though. You don’t need to be terribly mentally sharp for sanding!

My new router base arrived Wednesday, a day before any of the stuff I paid for did.  Nice.  And in Thursday’s mail came 6 pieces of new ebony, bigger than the pieces I got from Stew-Mac, and a whopping 1/16" thicker, which should help.  You can compare the original on the far left with the new ones.  And the new dental burrs arrived, too. 

I decided to get a jump on things and glue my shell down to the ebony now, so that I can scribe them on Saturday, although we’re having dinner guests and a puppy viewing, so thar be cooking and cleaning to do, so we’ll see.  I’m anxious to get back to work on these, though. I chose this piece because it had a flaw at the top and a blond streak down one edge. I figured I’d use the worst of the batch first.