Blue shark inlay part-2

[Clavin]

O.K in the last part we had our pieces cut, and joined together.

At that stage the whole inlay should be able to be picked up in our hand, and held like a 3-D puzzle.

Next is positioning- find the place where the inlay goes and glue it down with some contact cement. NOT CA, or epoxy, those are too strong. You want to use something that acetone will dissolve at least. Put a few drop on the bottom, position your inlay and let it dry in place for a few hours at least.

Like this.. Like this..

If you don't let it dry you will mess up your scribing, and have to start over again, and that can be a real pain. Don't rush it, do it right, be patient, and fight the urge to touch anything. That's the hard part! Just let it sit untill it dries.

Once the inlay is dry I use an exacto #11 blade and go around the entire thing with that, scribing out the patttern.

I then carefully lift off the piece and go over the scribed lines again with the blade, deepening the cuts. This isn't really necessary, but I like to make sure I have a clear pattern to rout to.

I then clean off any residual glue on the inlay and the board with acetone. This keeps everyting clean, otherwise your depth and height of your inlay pieces could be thrown off by the glue residue.

I rout using a foredom flex shaft tool. Basically a fancy dremmel.

I use The Stew-Mac downcut carbide bits in decreasing size as I get nearer to the edge of the rout pattern. I normally end at the 1/32 size. These bits are great, last a long time, and cut extremely clean.

No pictures of routing, sorry. You guys know how to rout though, right?

Next time gluing, leveling and engraving, with more photos.

Craig

[DividedByJames]

I've been reading your tutorial...very cool. I hope Brian puts this on the main site.

I got a question...I noticed your piece of blue plastic was thicker than the pearl. and you said you piece it together upside down to make everything flush on the top...so how to you get the back to be even? That blue piece looked a few mm's bigger than the pearl. Is the idea to ideally have everything the same thickness?

[Brian]

Oh Yeah

[LGM Guitars]

I know when I've used mismatched thicknesses what I do is glue it together face down as Craig said. Then if it isn't mismatched to badly I don't worry about it. Sometimes if there is a .010" or .020" difference, I'll clue some small squares of styrene plastic to the backside of the thinner material, this way I don't accidentally push the thinner stuff down into the route to hard and crack it or break it.

If the material is much thicker I will sand the thicker material down before I ever start cutting, (generally shell blanks are consistent, so I'm talking the difference between shell and plastic, shell can be ordered in different thickness's)

Sometimes after I have my inlay all glued together, I will use some double sided tape on my bench, and stick the inlay flush face down onto the tape, then use a block to sand the back side a bit, this really isn't necessary unless you have a very uneven surface.

[Clavin]

Hi DividedByJames.

I do the face down thing on certain occasions, mostly using shell and stone.

For the plastics the color is fast throught most times, so I tend to know what I am getting from the start. Abalone and black pearl, and even gold pearl have very shallow color depth, so it helps to have all the same thickness material from the start. Then glue it up face down, then inlay it flush.

The shells are all available in .03-.06. Abalams are available in .03-.19, and up if you know where to find them. I have abalams over a 1/4 inch thick! It's expensive stuff, but if you inlaying on a really high radius it can be helpful.

As far as thickness of materials goes, I use a Preac mini ship model woods thickness sander to get my thicker stones, and other materials down to .05-.06.

It's available on-line, and cost me about $300.00. It is basically a mini drum thickness sander, and I use it often for materials prep. If you have all of your materials at the same relative thickness, when you cut to the line of your pattern your basically following the top cut, any variation of your cutting angle as you go down gets magified towards the bottom of the cut. That can result in wide gaps, etc.. in your pieces. If they are all at the same thickness when you join the pieces together, assuming you cut to the lines, any variation beneath is non-significant, as long as you rout to the exact depth and inlay pretty flush with the surface.

Thicker blades help with cutting straighter, but some materials are only available in 1/2, and 1/4, or 1/8" thicknesses. Having them all even is one of my big secrets..

and now you all know

More pics and text soon.

Craig

[Clavin]

I know when I've used mismatched thicknesses what I do is glue it together face down as Craig said. Then if it isn't mismatched to badly I don't worry about it. Sometimes if there is a .010" or .020" difference, I'll clue some small squares of styrene plastic to the backside of the thinner material, this way I don't accidentally push the thinner stuff down into the route to hard and crack it or break it.

If the material is much thicker I will sand the thicker material down before I ever start cutting, (generally shell blanks are consistent, so I'm talking the difference between shell and plastic, shell can be ordered in different thickness's)

Hi LGM..

That's excatly why I use the thichness sander.

It gets everyting ready before you start to glue things up.

Most of the matrials I use these days are all thicker than shell by a good 1/8 inch, things like plastics, corian, stones.

It really helps keep the inlay under pretty good control.

Craig

[LGM Guitars]

I'm gonna have to look into one of those small thickness sanders, that sounds like the way to do it. Have you ever glued up a full inlay, taped the front for extra hold, and ran the whole thing through to make it totally even?