GET INLAID

I had lain the ebony on the bench and commenced to routing. As you see, I didn’t get very far when I stopped, because the wood was walking away from me. I needed to clamp it down with a real clamp; the spring clamp gave too much.

Okay, all clamped and ready to go. I was feeling the success of the project thus far, and just KNEW I was going to make a quantum leap in my routing abilities during this project.

My mistake was in assuming it would be forward.

In my own defense, I was the victim of several mechanical failures that should’ve stopped me before they actually did. First of all, though I had set the router base carefully, one screw had come loose, and when I actually plunged it into the wood, it went in considerably deeper than I wanted it to. I noticed trouble with the screw last time I used it, but thought I had it taken care of. Apparently not. And it kept giving me trouble the rest of the time I tried to use it. Which is why you see terraces within the routing of this piece. Given the thinness of the piece, I really didn’t have any room for error, but it hadn’t gone through, so I continued undaunted, if ill-advisedly. And I think I may have to replace my router base if I can’t get it sorted out, because I can’t have that happening. Maybe there’s a warranty—I should call Stew-Mac customer service. I hogged out the bulk of both designs with the regular 1/32” router bit, and then switched to the dental burr for cleanup.

Also in the picture above, you’ll notice shiny little technical difficulty #2. That would be the business end of the dental burr I discovered last time would be just right for this task. It was now what we refer to in the inlay trade as “garbage.” Sigh.

As an aside, ebony is very dusty-producing. Wood’s like that, I guess. But I collected a lot of what I routed for filler if needed.

I was not deterred by the broken burr, oh no! So I put another burr, the pointy one, to clean out the pointy parts and corners. This is a bigger job than it sounds because every time you change bits, you have to adjust the depth, and I was already having router depth/screw issues. I didn’t get very far when it, too, broke.

So I changed burrs again, to the next size up from the first one I broke. It was dull, and is probably no good anymore. So that’s 3 burrs down. Sigh. I decided to try to clean out the corners the low-tech way, with a chisel.

Would you believe I bent the chisel???

So I tried one more burr, the next bigger size of the first one I broke, and then the router base acted up again, plunging to greater depth then I wanted, and right through the piece of wood.

At this point, I was bested for the day. What’s really amazing is, after all that, the pieces actually fit pretty closely into the cavity.

However, I decided that rather than wasting time to work them into the ground, which was pretty much butchered at this point, I would get new burrs, a new piece of ground (and thicker, too, probably), and do it right. Of course, the thought “That’s a ruined peghead, that is,” ran through my mind. But I put it out of my mind, because it isn’t a peghead yet. It’s practice, and the reality is that I have made significant progress this round, even if the progress isn’t in the routing area yet.