GET INLAID

Last Saturday, I had 2 goals: rout and glue. I did the first routing with the 1/8” bit, as usual, and it went pretty well. I feel like I am growing in my control of the router, slowly but surely. One reason I picked this design is because it’s a single cavity, and I tend to do better routing those; the putzier it gets, the worse I get.

I carefully collected my routing shavings/dust in case I needed to do some filling later in the process, should the router decide to throw off my reins at some point.

I cleaned up the routing with the 1/32” bit with the router base, and then decided to do a little more clean-up with the same bit in the hand tool (after trying 2 dental burrs that were largely ineffectual). The latter was a mistake—without the weight of a router base, and two hands on it to control it, the router bit grabbed the wood and started plowing along. I ended up with an oversized cavity next to the front flipper, and a nasty nick in the wood next to the bottom fins. I had planned all along to do a smooth line over the top edge of the dorsal fin, as trying to rout that would be way beyond my skills at this point, and it would’ve just ended in frustration. The little arrows you see in the paint are areas that needed a bit more shaved off prior to the dry fit, and I did that with the router base again; I won’t be using the hand tool much; I can’t control it the way I want to. But it would be good to have a transparent router base. I’m already at a visual disadvantage; it’d be nice to see where I’m headed without having to lift the tool.

After dry-fitting the fish, which was now in several pieces instead of one after so much handling, I went and got my glue, which I’m storing in the house now. I started squeezing it into the cavity, and while it started well, it stopped and no pin would open the way. There was some kind of clog, and eventually I just had to yank the top off forcibly with a pliers. I used a plastic pipette as a stopper when I was done. I don’t know if the glue will hold up, but I’ll have to order some new stuff anyway.

I got the glue in the cavity and the pieces pressed in, then I got my sawdust out and pressed as much as I could into the worst gaps.

One problem I’ve been having is with air bubbles forming, and getting stuck, in the drying superglue. I had a plan to give my Space Bags a try to create vacuum enough https://www.spacebag.com/spacebag/901715/ to get the air out, but when I discussed it with Athena, she said she’d heard that some folks swore by vibration while the stuff dried. I decided that option had the lesser potential for a big mess, and once everything was glued and ready, I stuck the works on top of the aquarium pump I use to blow sawdust out of my way when I’m sawing or routing. It vibrates very fast and consistently. I left it like all afternoon and when I went to check on it late in the evening, it seemed to have helped a lot.

Sunday, then, was sanding day, though I didn’t get too far. I have been struggling with some kind of sanding setup that will hold my piece firmly while I sand it, yet will not get in my way, like clamping the piece itself does. The space under the clamp never gets sanded the same as the rest, and even if you move it around, you just get several problem spots. Plus, the clamp itself mars the piece itself and only adds to your sanding time.

I solved this, for the time being, by jerry-rigging a clamping system involving 2 other pieces of wood and 2 clamps in a design that I’d been thinking about for awhile, but hadn’t attempted. This was just scrap wood I had lying around. I put the piece to be sanded down and found 2 sturdy, yet relatively thin, pieces of scrap wood and clamped the scraps down tight enough to hold the piece in place.

Then I just sand the piece and when I’m going side-to-side, there’s no problem. I actually like the scrap on the right better for its thickness—it doesn’t impede my momentum like the other piece does. You can see how the right-hand piece is also getting sanded. If I ever break down and get that band saw, I’ll cut it in 2 and it’ll be perfect, at least for the stock I’ve been playing with lately. If I sand up and down, it tends to move, but I just whack it back in tighter. It certainly is better than using carpet tape, which never lasts long with all that dust; it comes up after a few strokes.

I sanded with 80-grit until all the paint, filler, and excess glue were gone. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the superglue and sawdust filler blended wonderfully with the cocobolo—you could barely tell it was there—and the vibrate-while-drying experiment was largely a success. There were a few bubbles I had to pick out, but not nearly as many as usual. I’ll use that technique again—thanks Ath! I was able to put on another layer of thin superglue to fill in where I’d picked the bubbles out and left it to shake dry overnight. All that remains is to finish sanding. Sanding is my best skill, so I’m feeling confident.