4th time is the charm?
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.
