GET INLAID

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.

So I watched Larry Robinson video 3 of 3 tonight, wherein I watched the man cut out a signature.  A FUCKING SIGNATURE.  He has mad sawing skills.  It’s a wonder to behold, and honestly, it blows my mind.  Think I can ingratiate myself with him adequately that he’ll leave me said sawing skills in his will?  As I saw the result (no pun intended), I could only picture myself cutting through the signature 16 times before I finally gave up.  And just to add to the level of difficulty, he cut it out of a $300 piece of 18K gold.  No pressure! Good videos.  I’m glad I watched them, although it’s a little like watching Tommy Emmanuel perform on guitar.  You are simultaneously attacked by the breathtaking virtuosity and the sad reality that you will never, ever be that good.  And yet, even so, I’m glad that SOMEONE is able to create such beauty in this world, even if it ain’t me babe, no, no, no, it ain’t me babe.  I’m bummed I have this barbecue to go to tomorrow; rather be sawing.

I was looking through old blog archives the other day, and I found this quote at the top of one.  I had forgotten it’d ever been there, and I cannot even remember what the context was, but it seems like a good thing to remember:

Don’t put a router up your nose.–Antiguo

It has been 9 months today, and he’s still looking out for me.  I hope he’s proud of my little sawdust efforts.

So Friday night I sat down and watched the first of the 3-video Inlay Techniques with Larry Robinson set.  He’s the guy who wrote one of my books and with whom I e-mailed a little bit.  It was well worth watching, and I took quite a few notes, but I don’t think I need to own the set.  I will, however, be renting the other 2.

The video was 2.5 hours long, and very useful on several fronts.  Probably first and foremost, it showed me that I do in fact have the techniques down.  I’m doing just what he’s doing.  I’m just not doing it with 25 years’ experience.  I found that very encouraging, though—I’ve got the basics, now it’s just a matter of practice.  I wasn’t doing anything horribly wrong.

Except using the wrong saw.  The saw I bought from Stew-Mac was this one.  And I have found that I have a really hard time getting the blade taut enough.  And a sloppy blade is hard to control, because it’s always bending.  So that might be part of my sawing accuracy issues.  He had said in his book, and repeated in the video, that it should "ping" when you thwack it if it’s tight enough.  Mine doesn’t ping so much; it kind of goes “pppbbbbffffttt.”  I’ve futzed with it over and over again and not gotten it much better. 

Robinson uses one like this.  He suggest just putting the sawblade in, and then pulling back the bottom piece until it’s tight enough.  Eureka!  I ordered it within minutes of finishing the video.  Less than 3 months of learning this stuff and already I’m replacing tools.  He also showed a trick for when you’ve got the blade through a piece of shell and are trying to tighten it, wherein you squeeze the jaws a bit while you tighten the blades, and then when you let off the pressure, it tightens up even more, which allowed me to get a much more taut blade in the saw I have.  I even got a little ping out of that baby.

I’ve been on the lookout for an 8HB pencil, and haven’t been able to find any, even online.  But in the video he mentioned a drafting lead.  So I’ll have to consider that.  I wanted a sharp pencil for scribing, but I think I’m going to give the Exacto knife option a try again, having watched him do it.  I think I might’ve been pressing harder than I needed to. 

Other tips and tricks I picked up from the video:
Acetone will remove the paper from the shell.  Acetone is way cheaper than the superglue remover I buy for $15/oz. from Stew-Mac.  I used it to reclaim some shell bits after I got tired sawing yesterday.  It’s still messy, stinky work, but much more effective than trying to soak it in that other stuff.  That’ll be a post in itself. 

He uses .060” shell.  I’ve been using .040”.  The thicker is more expensive, but I’m wondering if it isn’t worth it, because it seems much sturdier for its thickness—less breakage.  He showed this picture of a curlicue he did as a single piece.  It blew my mind.

He sets up and glues his inlays into a single plate or several plates (in the case of a large project) of smaller pieces, and then inlays the whole thing at once.  I haven’t done that, but will.  On smaller plates, he often does this gluing on a flexible metal wood scraper.  Bending the scraper, a la an ice cube tray, will pop the plate off the scraper, even if the superglue stuck.

He also showed that the air bubbles in the superglue once dry were just part of the process, and usually showed up, and what to do to take care of them. 

When he put his piece in the routed cavity the first time, it didn’t fit either.  And when he was done, he evaluated his piece and showed the imperfections.  I don’t feel so bad about having the same issues if the expert has to deal with the same stuff.