GET INLAID

I had big plans for sawing shell this weekend, figuring I could get it all done if I sawed both Saturday and Sunday. However, my body had other plans for me Saturday, and I spent most of the day asleep, hiding out from a world that would not stop rocking. Even if I’d forged ahead, I didn’t think feeling wobbly would really do much for my meeting my “greater accuracy in sawing” goal. The best I could do was read, and even that wasn’t possible until late in the evening.

I reread my book by Larry Robinson because I’d dug it out to get some guidance on a graver I wanted to buy, and as I was paging through, found answers to issues I’d been having. I’d forgotten I’d read them, but perhaps they just went over my inexperienced head. I figured now that I knew what I was doing, (at least conceptually), I might get more out of the book if I read it again, and that was the case. He commented that convex curves tend to get tighter as you rout into them, and concave ones get bigger as you rout them, which was, apparently, I observed in that last project. I also read my book by Grit Laskin, which wasn’t real long on specific techniques. It’ll teach you to inlay like Emeril will teach you to cook on his TV show. It’s all very neat and tidy, but I got some ideas from it nonetheless, and lots of inspiration from the pictures in both books. I’ve also ordered the first of Robinson’s 3 videos on doing inlay from this online site that traffics in “how-to” video rentals. If I like the first one and find it useful, I’ll buy the set. But $123 for the set is the cheapest I’ve found it, and I don’t want to sink that much into it sight unseen. Finding that site was a real boon.  I love the internets.

Sunday I was feeling better, well enough to try a little sawing. I had all my pieces glued the other night, with a few I knew I’d have to redo because the pattern bled. I held off on redoing those in advance, though, because I knew I’d never get all the shell cut in one day, and that I’d probably need to redo ones I sawed poorly as well, and it would be more efficient to do them all at once.

The flower pieces I was going to cut whole, and then engrave with detail. I ordered the graver and the goop (Grit Laskin’s signature engraving goop) last Friday. I realized as I work that I could probably do more of this and save on cutting, at least in some cases. But engraving is a whole other skill set I’ll have to learn. I got the idea to do the pieces big when I was digging through shell and realized I’d bought that piece of donkey’s ear abalam (with nothing in mind for it), and could get all of them on there.

This stuff is slick. Abalam is basically very thin pieces of shell matched and epoxied into sheets. It allows shell-blank makers to get more usable shell out of a shell, using slices so thin that they’d ordinarily end up in the trash. 6% yield is considered good. Nice to work with, and it seemed less likely to flake and chip in that it didn’t do either while I was cutting it. It’s pretty homogenous, whereas actual shell often has flaws hidden within that make the saw balk. I’m not sure how it’s going to sand to a nice sheen, but supposedly it will be the same as regular shell. We shall see. I did find that I had to cut the pieces out at the gross level, because the whole piece of abalam was too big to turn without bumping into various other apparatus. I’ll have to do a price comparison on it, because it seems more expensive than individual shell blanks (this sheet was $47.25), but given how much room you have, I wonder if it really IS more expensive.

It was hot in the “shop” even with garage and side doors open for flow-through. I have a portable swamp cooler that we bought for Scott’s studio shed at the last house and that I think he used once. I may have to dig that out and put it to work, because when it’s 110 outside, I’ll cook in the garage. It was sweaty as it was.

Here’s the first piece. I’m pretty pleased with the accuracy of my cutting. I kept repeating the mantra I read in the Robinson book: Just barely shave the line off. After the picture was taken, I picked the piece up and hand filed anyplace the black line was still showing. The fact that the lines are much thinner helped too, not so much with the cutting but later as I started fitting pieces together. Notice that the center part of this flower has been cut out. Now hold that thought—we’ll come back to it.

I started the day with a normal medium blade in the saw, but when it crapped out, I replaced it with one of my new fine saw blades. I’m not sure there was much benefit to it. It tended to be hard to get straight and without too much play in the saw frame (which becomes like pushing a chain when you’re trying to guide the saw accurately on the line), and they dulled really fast. I went through them probably 2.5 times as fast as the mediums. I’m not even sure it’s worth trying the extra fine, but since I’ve got them, I’ll keep them handy as spares. I may find a more germane use for them down the road.

One issue I discovered is that in order to fit the other pieces on the very narrow pieces of paua as I had planned, I had to cut them into smaller pieces on the pattern. Smaller pieces are not only hard to cut, they’re hard to hold onto! They’d squeeze out between my fingertip and the wood, fall down through the big V, and I’d end up on my hands and knees on the cement floor looking for the piece I dropped. If I was lucky, it didn’t break. I did this more times than I wanted to, and found all but one, which I’ll have to recut. So I modded my birds-beak with a side V (which I ended up doing to both sides for maximum flexibility) as suggested by both my books for cutting small pieces. I hadn’t done it before because I didn’t have a coping saw, and didn’t want to use the jeweler’s saw. Plus, there was no need before.

But with all these small pieces, and my frustration level growing, I had to do something. I took a Dremel cutter wheel after it, and broke 4 wheels in the process of cutting the 2 slots. It burned through, practically—the wood was scorched and smoke rose from the cut. When the 4th wheel broke, and I still wasn’t through at the tip of the right-hand one, I used the jeweler’s saw to finish up. I used both these little Vs, as well as the circle, as well as the big V, anything that will give me the support I need for the piece while cutting. Some of the pieces were just so small that I couldn’t get a good angle. I did find that in some cases I’d split up pieces that didn’t need splitting, and so recombined them when I realized they’d fit. A bigger piece is a stronger piece, and easier to cut. If they need visual separation, I’ll engrave the line. That’s the plan anyway.

I cut about half the shell over the course of 4 hours and was getting tired, so I decided to take a break and glue patterns to shell to replace pieces I broke, lost, or that I did a poor pattern-gluing job on the first place. Piece #24 ALMOST fit on the paua, which are all the same size, but not quite. So I dug through the green abalone for a bigger piece of shell I could use. I have several set aside for something “special,” because the figure was unusual. This was one of them, but it was the perfect size for what I needed, and the coloring was close enough to the paua, I thought, that it wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb, so I used it.

While those dried, I decided to reclaim the pieces that had bad patterns stuck to them. Doing so is messy and time consuming, so I only do it on those pieces that haven’t been cut at all yet. All the scrap goes into the scrap container with the paper still on until I decide what to do with them. You have to soak it in the solvent, then scrape the paper off, along with what has become really viscous superglue that stretches and slops like hot mozzarella.

As I was scraping off the paper, I managed to stab myself in the thumb with a brand-new Exacto blade point, and began bleeding profusely. I have a strict project rule: once blood has been drawn, it’s time to stop for the day.

Even so, I feel like I made good progress. All the pieces I cut, I placed on the pattern on the wood (covered with wax paper) and pushed them into place. The whole works was put into a shallow box, so that when I inevitably bump it, I won’t send pieces flying throughout the garage. They weren’t perfect, but they’re much better than previous efforts in terms of following the pattern AND fitting with each other. Yay.

Also, notice that the biggest flower now has a center piece? I did that in piece of green abalone that had a nice stretch of creamy gold coloring (also one of the set aside pieces). I cut it out, held my breath, and tried to place it where it was supposed to go. Damned if it didn’t drop right in! I was so proud. If that isn’t a sign of sawing improvement, I don’t know what is.

Today my forearms and hands are feeling tight and a little crunchy, respectively, and like they worked hard. It’s a good ache. And it also feels good to be making visible progress skill-wise.

I spent a good chunk of time researching CAD/CAM machines, which have made their way into the inlay industry.  My creative side is well-balanced with my geek side, and the thought of being able to use a computer to do precision cutting and routing light years beyond what my clumsy hands seem to be able to produce is, in a word, appealing.  You can certainly understand why.

I ended up at a CNC bulletin board, reading a thread started by the same guy I initially contacted to get a quote for doing the hummingbird for me.  He was looking to move into a bit more automation, allowing him to take on bigger jobs on things that were repeated designs, and needed advice about what kind of a machine to get, and what kind of software to run it.

I didn’t understand half of what I was reading, honestly, but what I got out of it is that a) there’s a real learning curve to being able to do it that way, in terms of learning how to get the software to talk to the machine, and calibrating it for the kind of fine work inlay requires; b) it’s hugely expensive—the software alone runs $1500 and up, the machines $17K; c) and, as I find frequently on a lot of these sites, there’s an expectation of some experience with woodworking, CAD, and related stuff prior to you even considering making the jump.  I don’t have that experience.  Owning more than one grit of sandpaper was a huge woodworking step for me.  I look at my workbench, with all its tools, and I’m proud and amazed all this stuff is mine and I know how to use most of it, if not well.  But I certainly have a long way to go.

The financial reality puts that out of reach for me anyway, but when one is dreaming and pondering, it’s easy to set that inconvenient fact aside for the time being.  And the question I kept coming back to was “You could invest time in learning software, or you could invest that time in getting better at what you’re doing.”  The answer seemed clear.  I had the same mental debate about recording my music.  I could put a lot of time, effort, and money into gear and learning about recording, but I didn’t really want to learn to become a sound engineer; I want to learn to be a guitarist.  So that’s where I decided to dedicate my energy.

Plus, I like working with hand tools.  I like the pace of them; it suits me.  And then there was the feeling I had that being a director of machines would make my inlay less art and more velvet-Elvis-paint-by-numbers.  Then again, if you’re in business, time is definitely money, and I cannot fault anyone for finding a better, quicker way to create beauty AND feed their families.  But that is certainly not where I am yet.

The other thing I got out of my research is that there are a lot of folks out there with the same dream I have:  of giving up their day job and making a go of being a professional inlay artist.  And most of them have far more visual artistic ability than I do.  I admit, I got a little discouraged.  I tried not to entertain that thought too long, because best-case scenario is that it’s quite a bit down the road for me, and I accept that.  I have no idea what the future will bring; all I can do is work at it and see what unfolds.    It’s true of inlay; it’s true of life.  I have to believe it is not by accident that most of the well-known inlay artists are in their 50s or older.  They’ve been working at this a long time.

I started this project in order to put a hummingbird on Vera, and I do believe I will progress enough in time to achieve that goal, and perhaps tattoo my own guitars from time to time.  The thought that it could become more came later.  Not that I wouldn’t continue doing inlay, because I think I would.  I enjoy it.  But as a business?  I don’t know.  I always envied Antiguo’s work life, creating beautiful things with his hands instead of clicking a mouse to create something that ultimately was negligible in its contribution to the world.  And while he loved his work, the business side was a constant worry for him, and he envied my steady paycheck.  So perhaps being a hobbyist is the best of all possible worlds.  In any case, that is a decision for a future day.  For now, I’ve got shell to saw.

Scott came to my rescue, and fixed my smoking Dremel problem. Apparently, tightening things too much was what caused the problem. I also read in the fine print that the motor needed to be ABOVE the handpiece. I’d seen racks for just this setup in my catalogs, but didn’t know what they were for. Now I know. I decided to save myself $20 and hammer a nail from which to hang the Dremel in the proper position, since there’s a little hanger loop on it.  Worked just dandy.

So it works now, and I thought I’d just try it a little, just to see how it goes…and a little became more and more, until I’d finally outlined the whole piece.

The dental burr I put into the hand piece is pretty slick—so tiny I can actually get into the tight corners.

The lines I was making seemed a little bumpy, and I finally realized that it was fighting the grain lines. When I ratcheted up the speed, that problem was mitigated quite a bit. Good to know. I still have to get used to using the hand tool; this was the first time I tried it. Apparently, too much pressure and friction gets the bit excited, and it was growing longer in front of my eyes. I had to stop from time to time and put it back in.

The next 4 pictures are the finished result. The first 2 were before I realized a higher speed would avoid a lot of the bumpiness, the 3rd about half and half, and the last I’d cranked it up and the lines were smoother.

Since that bit has bite all the way around, it makes for a very nice precision smoothing tool that I’m sure I’ll make use of when I start fitting the pieces and find edges that are just a bit off. Using this bit with the hand tool is the first part of a 3-step process I read about—outline with the precision bit, then use the router as I had been to clean out the middle junk left behind, avoiding the edges entirely, and the third step is to “undercut” (I’ll need to review that part; it wasn’t real clear) with a ball-end dental bit. I may use the first step exclusively for very skinny vine parts that are as thin as the router bit is.  I’ll have more control.

I decided to stop while I was ahead and feeling good about it.

I found a very good article on doing inlay on the web today. This bit was particularly important: