GET INLAID

So Saturday morning, I went out to the shop, full of hope and enthusiasm, ready to scribe and rout. I’d gotten everything ready the night before, and all I had to do was go in, draw a circle, and I would be set. Which I did.

And then I carefully used my razorblade to remove the design from the rosewood after scribing.

Words cannot convey how shocked and upset I was. In fact, just LOOKING at the photo now, with 24 hours between me and the horrid event, still causes my heart to skip a beat. I really could’ve just cried. I almost did. I was dumbstruck, and just sat there staring at it for the longest time. All that work. All that intricate sawing and cutting and sanding and filing and assembling, undone in a nanosecond. I still don’t know how it happened. I was careful, and hadn’t put that much glue on it.

I pondered quitting right then and there, not entirely sure if I meant that particular project or the whole works. I pondered redoing the entire project, which is what I would’ve had to do if this were a “real” project in my future imaginary shop, and decided I didn’t have the heart. Finally, I decided to glue the two broken pieces together, accept that the finished product would be marred, and get the practice on the rest of the steps in. But man…

The scribing was straightforward enough.

I usually rout everything with a 1/32” router bit, but given how much material I had to get through and the simplicity of the design, I decided to hog out the center with the 1/8” first and clean up with the 1/32” bit.

I recently picked up a pair of Dremel chucks. The theory was that I wouldn’t have to fart around with switching between collets and could just rechuck whatever bit I was using, including the wee dental burrs with a minimum of muss and fuss. The actual practice was, of course, not so smooth. The chuck wouldn’t hold tightly enough to the bit, and it was sliding out and pushing back while I was using it, and generally being a nuisance. So I chucked the chuck in a bin and went back to the collet. You will also note in this picture that my thumb is healing, slowly. It doesn’t hurt anymore.

However, that was no guarantee of routing consistency, either, apparently. I measured everything carefully, tightened everything well, and thought I was good to go.

However, while everything started fine, I noticed a terraced effect in the routing. The bit was being pulled out as it worked. So I tightened everything up again, including the router base, and tried again.

This b.s. went on throughout the routing process, including switching to the smaller bit. I coped by stopping periodically to make sure everything was tight. It may be the collet/nut deal around the bit itself, and maybe I need to use that little wrench that came with the Dremel. Could be that hand-tightening just isn’t enough.

I usually stick a piece of double-sided carpet tape to the piece I’m routing/sanding so that I don’t have negotiate around a clamp, but it just didn’t want to stay put so I ended up clamping anyway. I’m going to have to come up with something that will work better for that purpose.

I got this far with the 1/8” bit, and then went in to do clean-up with the 1/32”. It was pretty painless, and I am slowly learning to control my router. There were a few spots where it decided to get away from me, but given that I had to expand the cavity after anyway, because it was tight, most of those spots disappeared in the end.

I’d dry-fit the piece, gingerly as I didn’t want it to break again along the new existing fault line, rout some, and repeat until it dropped in. My hesitance to handle it overmuch resulted in the design being slightly skewed in the end because I didn’t want to pull it out again.
I glued it in, touching it up with more glue after the first layer had dried, and left it overnight Saturday.

Sunday then was all sanding. Wood dust gets caught in tiny cavities in the drying, and dried, superglue, and somehow doesn’t come out nearly as easily as it goes in.

I spent a lot of time picking out sawdust and air bubbles with a needle awl and Exacto knife, and regluing, and waiting. I stuck it out in the sun on the bricks to dry faster. Funny how that worked. It was hot in the garage, even with a fan and a portable swamp cooler. I was dripping while sanding. Sanding is very physical work, though I think I like that about it. You feel productive.

After much sanding, a little water cleanup, and a Tung oil bath, she is finished.

The crack doesn’t show too badly, and if you didn’t know it was there, you could easily think it was part of the figure of the MOP, which does have a really nice figure to it. To my eyes, the gaps between pieces are really obnoxious. Also, the importance of the careful selection of colors of pieces is highlighted by that one very blue-green piece of green abalone, where all the rest are more subdued.  It sticks out like a sore thumb.

I learned a lot, and it was a challenging design, but I’m just not feeling the pride on this one that I did on the last one, and I’m not sure why. When you make it, you know where every flaw is, so it’s hard to appreciate it, I think. Or maybe because I had an emotional investment in the design of the other one—it was an image I’d wanted to do for a long time. This one I picked because it was a technical challenge. Who knows?

Onward! I have projects 8 and 9 semi-started. More on that soon.