sequoia
Well-known member
Did a second turquoise rosette this time on a spruce top. CA glued. A couple observations:
- The width of the turquoise (not including purfling) is about 1/8 inch wide or a little less than 4 mm. This I think is about as wide can be practically done. Two reasons: It takes a lot of turquoise and sanding it down becomes more of a factor. After sanding out with aggressive paper (80) on a big orbital sander, a lot of wood came off too. The thickness of the top there went from 12 mil to 10 mil creating a thinner area. Not a disaster, but is going to take some artful sanding to get things back to even. Still plenty of meat left.
- With the bigger chunks in the powder, there are some small voids after sand out. I considered filling them with some powder which would have been easy enough, however I kind of like the void look as it is more "stone like" and turquoise has these natural voids.
The pictures do not show the color well at all. It is much more blue "turquoise" color than shown. It almost looks jade like in the pictures. Much better in real life.
What I liked about cutting in the channels is that width is not critical like it is with shell or other precut inlays. Much quicker set-up. Depth is also not critical. I set it at about 4.5 mil just because. Could probably be shallower to save stone.
Voids
- The width of the turquoise (not including purfling) is about 1/8 inch wide or a little less than 4 mm. This I think is about as wide can be practically done. Two reasons: It takes a lot of turquoise and sanding it down becomes more of a factor. After sanding out with aggressive paper (80) on a big orbital sander, a lot of wood came off too. The thickness of the top there went from 12 mil to 10 mil creating a thinner area. Not a disaster, but is going to take some artful sanding to get things back to even. Still plenty of meat left.
- With the bigger chunks in the powder, there are some small voids after sand out. I considered filling them with some powder which would have been easy enough, however I kind of like the void look as it is more "stone like" and turquoise has these natural voids.
The pictures do not show the color well at all. It is much more blue "turquoise" color than shown. It almost looks jade like in the pictures. Much better in real life.
What I liked about cutting in the channels is that width is not critical like it is with shell or other precut inlays. Much quicker set-up. Depth is also not critical. I set it at about 4.5 mil just because. Could probably be shallower to save stone.
Voids
