9 days ago
by Autumn |
23 comments »
HOW TO CUT AND INLAY MOTHER OF PEARL ...Frequently asked questions:
1) Where do you buy your mother of pearl?
I buy my MOP from Andy DePaule at http://www.luthiersupply.com/index.html.Other suppliers are out there, but I like Andy and the product he provides.
2) What size MOP do you buy?
I buy the thickest available and always the same thickness. I am human, and I make mistakes. When using whisper-thin MOP, it is too easy to sand through my best-laid plans. In addition, inlaying p...
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21 days ago
by RobertHorton |
6 comments »
I’m already a bit into this project and I’ll be nibbling at it for several months. Here’s a recap of what’s happened so far:This is what it will ultimately look like. We’re not particularly big wine drinkers, so a small bay will just about hold our entire stock of booze. I haven’t decided what to do with the doors, but this got me far enough for a cut list on the carcase and veneers. The point of this project is a.) to showcase some Pangapanga that the ...
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23 days ago
by captkerk |
3 comments »
I made some good progress today and it looks like the next time I can spend a decent amount of time in the shop, I should have this thing assembled. I started today sanding the three brackets and the aprons in preparation for assembly.
I noticed a decent sized dent in the face of one of the aprons and decided to try out the wet rag and iron method to raise the dent. I forgot to get pics, but it worked like a charm. As I was sanding one of the end brackets and looking at the inlay that h...
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30 days ago
by captkerk |
3 comments »
I was able to get the purpleheart inlay done on the end brackets. To make the curved purpleheart pieces, I used the template for the end brackets to trace a line on a piece of purpleheart then cut it out on the band saw. After sanding to the line on the disc sander, I traced a line 5/16” from the edge and cut that out on the band saw.
I then attached the piece with the inside curve to the movable fence on my drum sanding jig so the curved strip could pass by the sander with a l...
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37 days ago
by captkerk |
5 comments »
I finally got around to working on the console again and I’m now jumping in with the inlays and edge banding the top to cover my biscuit mistake. I cut some strips of walnut and purpleheart to about 7/8” wide and 3/8” thick that would get sanded down to 1/4”. Since I don’t have a thickness sander, I tried out a jig I saw in an old FWW magazine to use a drum sander on the drill press to accomplish the same task on thin strips.
The jig is simply a fixed bo...
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68 days ago
by interpim |
5 comments »
Well, I am in the process of my first attempt at a guitar, and I have decided to go with Walnut to build it out of. I am designing it somewhat similar to a Les Paul, but I am putting my little twists on it here and there.
As they say, when it rains it pours. I guess that applies here as well. Because I attempted my first inlay today. It isn’t perfect and there are some spots that need a little filler but I think for my first attempt I did fairly well.
I first sawed off a coupl...
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131 days ago
by Jon3 |
1 comment »
Once again, I went for some more of that curly spalted maple offcut. I spent some time seeing if I could figure out how to make my own tooling from a spare card scraper, my my first attemps to cut down hardened stock were a pretty big failure. I picked up the L-N cutters, since they’re only $15 and appropriately sized already, and went to town.
This is by far the simplest tool in the batch. Really, its just a block of wood with 2 cuts, 2 rabbets, and 4 screws.
I didn’t thin...
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131 days ago
by Jon3 |
1 comment »
With my straight line cutter complete, I moved on to the slicing gauge. This tool, along with a slicing board (which is really just a board with a lip to hold the inlay material up against) allows you to cut (a ripping action) long thin strips from your inlay sheet stock. This is the first part of making the inlay material itself. Here is my ‘raw materials’ shot. I went with a curly spalted maple body, and a Sipo cutter support bar left over from the previous tool’s offcuts....
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136 days ago
by Jon3 |
6 comments »
Cut off and mounted, the brass point actually looks kind of nice. I’ll just be a little less generous with the epoxy next time, so I don’t end up with that overfill bead.
I mounted the radius cutter, going about 1/16th to 1/8th deeper than the brass pivot point, so that the cutter will remain as perpendicular to the work as possible. Since the holes in the cutter to attach it to the tool are oval, there is some room for adjustment later on.
It isn’t perfect, ...
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137 days ago
by Jon3 |
1 comment »
I was very intruiged by Steve Latta’s DVD for Lie-Nielsen “Fundamentals of Inlay: Stringing, Line & Berry” and the associated line of inlay tools that they offer along with it. I learned (by way of the Villiage Carpenter) that Steve has been touching a longer course on inlay for quite some time, and used to advocate the manufacture of your own tools, in the style that Lie-Nielsen is now offering. When looking at those offerings, I did think that several of them could...
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53 entries
