GET INLAID

I decided Friday night that I could do the clean-up and assembly of the pieces I cut last weekend, perhaps even getting it glued to the ground so that Saturday I could scribe and rout and glue the design in, and sand and finish Sunday. We’ll see if those are famous last words or what.

Clean-up involved me taking an Exacto knife to the cut pieces to remove the superglue I’d put the small pieces together with last Sunday, and get the wax paper off as well. It became clear pretty quickly that a) I had gone too heavy on the superglue, and b) it wasn’t going to come off easily with an Exacto knife. Superglue dries brittle, and it wasn’t having any of my feeble attempts to get rid of it.

I created a miniature acetone bath in an empty pill bottle, and dropped the pieces in 1 or 2 at a time (so I wouldn’t lose track of where I was). In some cases, there was little enough glue on the piece that they came out clean as a whistle. In others, the glue at least was softened enough that I could scrape it off.

The scraping took a lot of time anyway; I’ll be more careful with the superglue next time. I probably could’ve skipped gluing them until the end, but I was paranoid about losing small pieces and—HORRORS!—having to pull out the saw again when I was done. A minor blood sacrifice was paid to the Exacto knife gods, but I think I’ll live. Dem knives are sharp, even when they’re dull. But eventually I got all the pieces fitted. Voila!

I superglued (lightly!) the whole piece and put it in the top of an Altoids container. I’d read somewhere, maybe it was Larry Robinson, about gluing the design together on a cabinet scraper, and then when you bend it, it comes up. I’ve thought about it, but wasn’t sure how it would work, so I gave it a test run on this. It is superior, and I don’t think I’m going to fart around with wax paper, at least at this stage, again. The superglue sticks to it, and it’s a pain to clean off. I’ll be getting me one of those cabinet scrapers. I think I got a Woodcraft coupon just the other day, as a matter of fact.

I realized that I’d gotten this far without deciding what ground I was going to put this inlay into. I went into ye olde wood bin and grabbed a piece of Bolivian rosewood that caught my eye.

I measured it against the design itself, marked it, and then cut it with my circular saw. Damn, that thing’s loud, and it really seems overkill for a 3/8” piece of wood. I’ve been talking to my new inlay buddy Athena about the joys of bandsaws. I think there may be one in my future. I just got a new, powerful Milwaukee drill, refurbished. Hello, my name is Kristie, and I’m a toolaholic. I probably should not admit publicly that I got a little thrill holding it in my hand.

I sanded the excess glue off the back, even though it was still a bit damp, and stuck the design to the rosewood with Duco cement, where it’ll sit overnight. Tomorrow then, I can scribe and rout. Considering that it’s just a circle, routing should be fairly straightforward. Now that I’ve jinxed myself, we’ll see.