GET INLAID

I had another good sawing day today, and finished all the sawing for my goldfish without having to resaw a single piece, which is unprecedented for me. Two good weekends of sawing in a row? I hardly know how to act. But I am elated.

I think my new and improved Zen attitude toward the process has helped. The very thin lines I managed on this project’s pattern also have helped immensely. This is something I learned before, but apparently I needed a reminder.

I would saw a piece, fit it with the ones already sawn, and clap with glee when it fit just so. There is hope for me yet!

Let me tell you about today’s biggest sawing victory. Remember that piece that was clamped?

It is actually two pieces of shell (well, three, but the third was just a spare to keep thickness consistent and not part of the pattern.) I was experimenting with a method I learned in the Patterson book.  He suggested it, as I recall, for cutting multiples of the same piece, and also for cutting fitted adjoining pieces. The idea is that you glue two pieces of shell together with white glue (which is what Patterson recommends, and which I’ve adopted as well), putting the pattern on top, saw, and then soak them in water and separate them later. The result is two perfectly interlocking pieces because they shared the same sawing line.

So I decided to give it a try for the fish’s dorsal fin. The design is pretty complicated, sawing-wise, with all the ups and downs.

I knew that it was unlikely that I would be able to saw with the kind of precision needed to get them to line up over such a long stretch, and I wanted to use two colors of shell: gold MOP for the main fin and black for the edge piece.

So I found a piece of gold MOP of suitable size, put an appropriately sized piece of the black over it, and, realizing that a sudden change of thickness in shell might lead to extra broken saw blades and make the edge of the smaller piece vulnerable to chipping, I added another piece of black and clamped the works together.

I sawed that piece second today, just so I could warm up, but I wanted to do it early while my concentration and my hands were still fresh. My plan was to cut down the middle of the piece first, leaving two hefty sides for cutting the remainder out. More shell equals less breakage, I’ve learned, and it gives me something to hold on to.

The added bonus to doing it this way is that if you find that the ambition of the drawing was beyond your sawing skill level, as I did, you can make changes to it on the fly and not worry about it. Unless you chip it, there is no way these pieces won’t fit together, but if you were doing two separate pieces you’d have a hard time winging a change and still get them to match. As you can see in this picture, I made adjustments and expanded the width of some of the peaks to make it easier on myself while still being faithful to the spirit of the design.

I decided to dig out my #2 blades (I usually use #3) to make the kerf between the two pieces as small as possible. I’d bought them awhile back, thinking they’d help me be more accurate, but that seems to be more a matter of skill than tool; I gave up on them before because they’d break too often, but I thought they’d be good for this purpose. I dumped the whole dozen out on the bench and made peace with the probability that I would use all 12 before I started sawing. And I didn’t get stressed when they broke, because the saw blade is already broken. (Get me! So Zen!)

I did get a little stressed when one broke and ricocheted off my left ring finger with enough force to draw blood, but it didn’t bleed much and I kept going. I also sawed a wee bit into my left middle finger, but no blood. We call that a good day in the shop. It’s been a bad weekend for me, safety-wise. I wrangled with a mesquite branch yesterday and lost, with a profusely bleeding head scratch and several nasty scratches down my back as well. But it got me out of a lot of the remainder of the yardening and housework today; Scott didn’t want me hurting myself…anymore. I didn’t tell him about the saw issues.

Here you can see the two levels of shell.

And here is the worst of the sawing on this piece, done, and everything intact.

That’s the other secret bonus I didn’t really think about of doing this layered shell method. You’ve got 2 layers of shell and some Elmer’s glue in betwixt, making the entirety of what you’re sawing so much stronger. Yeah, it takes more elbow grease to saw through it, but it’s not difficult. That extra strength came in very handy when I finished the top fin piece. A piece this slender would’ve broken 3 times as I cut it, and I would’ve ended up doing it over and over and over had it been a single thickness of shell. I might consider it for vulnerable pieces in general in the future. As it was, once was the charm, though it did break in the water bath I had it sitting in to separate the shells. However, it’s still totally usable, so no problem. (Athena reminded me that breakage is not necessarily a tragedy—thanks Ath!) I set aside the broken off piece for safety and left the rest in the bath.

Then I put together what I had in the box, and though this picture shows gaps, because I didn’t glue any of it down and it moves when I touch it, it actually all fits nearly perfectly. I’m quite stunned. And giddy. When I slid that little front fin piece (#18) into the slot in the front, and it went right where it was supposed to, I was grinning.

I will drop these pieces into a bath to get the paper off prior to gluing them all together, so I can see what I’ve got. The pieces are unique enough that I won’t confuse them without their labels. Once the bathing beauties have relinquished their paper patterns and each other, in the case of the double-layer pieces, I will be able to glue them into a single plate. And then it’ll be routing time.

I am so pleased at how this came together this time, and so glad I backtracked to a simpler design. I stepped back to move forward and it’s paying off. The fact that I was invested in this little fishy has helped, too. When I was doing some of those practice geometric pieces, I wasn’t excited about all of them. I think that extra enthusiasm keeps you focused and persistent.

This post is overdue. It’s been one of those weeks. But I got back on the inlay horse this past weekend, with a new design I’m actually invested in. It’s simple overall, though there are some tricky sawing bits.

I have discovered that I tend to do better when the final design is a single, solid plate. It especially helps at the scribing and routing stage. Once I get into multiple pieces and plant fronds, it tends to accelerate towards hell at a breakneck pace.

I thought about what was solid, yet interesting, that I would want to do. Nothing came to mind. At some point along the way, I remembered my college RA’s goldfish (don’t ask me why). She had one of those pudgy ones (without the bulging eyes) that are so cute, and so I thought about something like that. I ended up finding this picture in Google images, printed it out, and worked up a drawing using my light table to trace it.

Then I had to figure out where I’d cut the pieces, based on size and colors. I planned to use MOP in gold, black, and white, and a small piece of ebony for the middle of the eye. There might end up being a small amount of engraving, if I’m feeling brave at the end. My first efforts were nothing to write home about. Since I hadn’t shrunk the image yet, I had to guess, and some pieces are numbered twice: once if they’re by themselves, and a second time if the pieces of shell I had could cover a couple pieces at once. It helps to number pieces BEFORE you make copies. I’ve forgotten before and it’s a pain.

Friday night I glued patterns to shell. I’ll tell you about the piece with the clamps on it when I get to sawing it. As I glued, I realized that I could consolidate a lot of pieces I’d numbered separately into a single piece. Granted, there’s some artistry to be done by making each piece separately. However, I decided that I really could use a win on this whole thing, and I figured the best way to improve my chances on that would be to keep the design as simple as possible. Bigger pieces break less, and minimize the number of tiny errors that will accumulate and tank the project. I decided that at this stage of the game that simple and well executed was preferable to complicated and begging to be executed. So I ignored a lot of subdivisions and looked for pieces that would work both in color, size, and figure. The pre-arranged subdivisions made this easier, though, because if there wasn’t enough room for a section, I didn’t have to decide on the fly where to divvy it up and try to recreate that line on every version of the pattern, which would’ve led to slight differences and a poor fit.

This was the last piece I sawed that day, and I’m a little more than half done sawing.  It is the piece of the body that will merge into the tail pieces, and it is a little daunting with all the ups and downs.  I consolidated a lot of them that were in the original picture but even so, there are tapered bits sticking out.   And yet I managed to saw them without breaking any!  I am unbelievably proud of this piece.  Proud enough that you must admire it from both sides.



The trick, of course, will be cutting the pieces that are supposed to fit with it equally well so that they actually fit.  There was some yard work to be done, and I wanted to leave it on a high note, so I quit sawing there.  I didn’t go back to it Sunday, as I was on the injured reserve list, and I was still basking in the glory of a good sawing day.  I didn’t want to ruin it.  I’ll work on it again this weekend.

Despite heroic measures taken, I pronounced project #9 dead at the scene this evening.  Moving on…

I already know #10 will be better.  

Then again, how could it not be?
 

Well, this weekend, in the spirit of taking a break from inlay, I made this guy out of a pair of socks.  He’s homely, but he’s supposed to be.  You’d be homely, too, if you were made out of socks.  I rather like him.  And I didn’t saw off any fingers trying to make him.  Woohoo!

Saturday also saw the arrival of my newest book order.  I am probably in need of a saw, maybe band, maybe scroll, maybe I have no idea.  So I do what I always do:  got a book on it, to learn about all the tools, so that should I decide I have money burning a hole in my pocket, I can make an intelligent purchase.  Right now, it’s sitting on the bookcase, but it’s ready at a moment’s notice if need be. 

Saturday night I also scribed my fuschia project, with the idea of perhaps tackling the routing on Sunday.  That was not to be, as my body was in full rebellion, and I spent the day resting with a book.  It waits on my bench.

Monday, I was rereading old e-mails, and I found one from my friend Shenry.  He had asked me the following:  "To what extent can we actually change ourselves? Do we have the capability to go from Kristie to Siddhartha? Do we have the capability to go from shenry to Reza Zadeh (2004 Olympic Weightlifting Gold Medalist)? Or are we limited by personality programming, physical ability, dna, and our environments?"

And this was my response:

"To what extent can we change ourselves?  To the level of our desire and our definitions of success.  One cannot go without the other.  For example, with the guitar, I have many, many more things to learn, and I hope to learn them, and am working toward learning them.  However, the reality is, I have already achieved all my dreams in re: to playing and performing when I started down this road.  By all my definitions, I am a success at this activity and could quit now without NEEDING to evolve anymore.  However, I’d like to evolve further because I enjoy it, and while I might like to evolve indefinitely, there is the reality that my hands and joints already give me trouble, and it could cause me problems down the road that would make further evolution on the playing front difficult, if not impossible.  And if I am attached to only a single definition of "guitar success," I’m going to have a real heavy emotional price to pay if/when that day comes.  And in that, I guess it really is a Zen thing.  Are you committed to evolution, or a specific outcome, a very limited evolution?  If you’re committed to evolution itself, you will never stop evolving and changing; there are no limits.  Even if you never become Reza Zadeh, you might evolve into someone else’s Blenda down the road.  However, if you’re committed to becoming Rezah Zadeh, and only in doing so will you stamp yourself "successful," then you are going to most likely be limited.  However, even a cursory examination will indicate that you put the limitation on yourself before you even started, rather than it being imposed upon you from without.  If you’re trying to become something specific and limited, there will be limitations; but if you are trying to BECOME, well, then, there’s no stopping you.
 
That is not to say visualizing a goal and working toward it isn’t valuable.  Thought, word, deed, and all that.  It’s the attachment to the goal, and the dismissal of all other possibilities that could come of it as failures, that’s going to cause us problems.  I have big dreams for my inlay project.  I would like to get out of this cubicle and do it professionally, work with my hands creating beauty instead of e-mails.  I’ve named my company already.  It’s a goal.  I’m visualizing it.  I’m talking about it, at least to myself.  I’m working toward it.  But I have a long way to go, as I’m just beginning, and I cannot say what will happen.  My interests may change, my patience may not hold out long enough to learn the skills I need to make it as a pro, I may lose an arm in a freak accident, I may be making perfect progress on my way to that goal and die before I get there.  And yet, here I am, working on it, knowing all of the above to be true, because what else do I have to do?  I’m here. May as well do something interesting."

That was my mistake:  attaching to one goal as the only definition of success, and anything that didn’t meet it was a failure.  I knew the answer so clearly in February, but somehow forgot it between there and here.  But it is the right answer.  If I can just get out of my own way, hip-check my ego off to the side, and get back to enjoying puttering in my shop, I will be happier, and I have to believe the work will get better.