A Couple Interesting Techniques

Fellow builder Link Van Cleave came over to my shop yesterday and we got discussing inlay techniques.

The first one I had never tried was to take the inlay material and place it on top of the material in which it would be inlayed and cut thru both at a 10 to 15 deg angle in such a way that the bottom piece ends up being slightly smaller due to the angle. Simple as it is I never thought of that. May not work for small pieces but that is how they get those perfect fits in marquetry.

The second technique new to me is shading the edge of wood to add realism. For instance if you were inlaying a coconut tree and you wanted the trunk to appear round you would shade one edge of the wood. He would do this by using a hot plate and heating a pot of dry sand then dipping the edge he wanted to darken repeatedly in the sand until the desired degree of shading was reached.

As you mention, both of these techniques are normal for marquetry and "intarzia"

http://www.google.com/images?client..._group&ei=haewUe3AEqWcigLY7IDYBw&ved=0CBgQsAQ

You can certainly do this with peghead overlays, but it won't work for fingerboards, though, where a lot of instrument inlay is done.

thanks for that Rick. here is a great example of the shading technique Wow that's crazy!!!!

Rick, Is there a reason not to use the angle cutting technique on a fingerboard by gluing your thin marquetry layer to like dense wood such as ipe making up the desired fingerboard thickness. You would need to bind the edges but could save quite a bit of ebony.

I used to do the Angle thing when I owned a scrollsaw..It was called it the "window technique"..My mate used to say "If you make a mess of it you chuck it out of the window"

Michael, you could do that, and in fact, I make a lot of guitars and basses with thin (.075" so so) fingerboards. It's a technique best suited to a really good scroll saw where the blade tension is carefully controlled and the action of the blade is really smooth. You'd also need a throat on the saw deep enough for the fingerboard...not a big deal on a uke, but a bit more so with guitars and basses.

Actually, I'm going to be storing my son's DeWalt scroll saw at my shop this summer (read...using!), and I might try that.

The problem with cutting double thicknesses is that not only does your angle need to be consistent, the angle has to be maintained on all of the outbound curves only. When I used to do this I always kept the blade leaning slightly to the right but it can be tough when cutting very small pieces. If your angle is too steep in some places the interior piece will wind up sitting on top and that's as bad as a piece fitting too loosely. While the stacking technique works pretty well with wood (which is softer and has some "give" when fitting the pieces together) it's pretty difficult to do with mother of pearl shell. Two thickness of .06" MOP can be pretty tiring to cut and you'll break a lot of blades. Of course you can use bigger blades but then you'll have wider kerfs. I've just learned where to cut on the line (never on the line) and be consistent about it and things fit.
The sand shading technique is probably as old as the art of marquetry itself. If you are going to try it make sure your sand is hot enough but not red hot. Since you'll be leveling all of these surfaces after they're inlayed you don't want the outer surface to be colored while just beneath the surface the wood is unaffected. (See thread about baking fret boards.) Slow and easy is the trick. Also, choose your woods carefully with this technique. Wide grained or figured woods will "color" (burn) at different rates, leaving a blotchy effect on the piece. Soft areas will "cook" faster than hard areas will. This may not be apparent until you've leveled the piece. (Try it on curly maple to see what I mean.)