ChuckBarnett
Well-known member
I'm working on my first inlay project (mother of pearl), practicing on East Indian Rosewood and planning to do the actual peghead veneer in W. African Ebony. Didn't choose to try the shell cutting so I simply planned to do the easier task -routing the pockets. HAH!
I got my logo back from DePaule Supply, and found the letters to be of varying thicknesses (14 thousands of an inch on the extreme) sometimes varying 8 thousandths in the same letter. I could carefully cut the channels for each letter to match as best I can the thickness of each one. Or I wonder if a better plan would be to double-stick tape them to a board and gang sand them to a more uniform thickness? My thinking is to split any remaining differences from that sanding by routing the channels deep enough so that as little shell-surface sanding would have to be done. (Mind you, I may be overthinking something I know nothing about --that's never happened before...!)
I also found that the letters I received weren't an accurate match to the original drawing. I had hoped to cut the channels using a CNC router. After cutting the pockets for the letters, I experimented with tailoring them with a Dremel. I wasn't finding this workable and finally checked the inlay against the drawing and saw that there is some difference; to the extent that using the CNC process off of the original drawings isn't saving much time and effort at all. So I may simply work on cutting the pockets in without the CNC.
Another question: I read about the possibility of cutting shell out with a CNC router. If that is do-able, I would give it a try. Do any of you do that? Where do you buy your mother of pearl blanks?
Thanks!!
I got my logo back from DePaule Supply, and found the letters to be of varying thicknesses (14 thousands of an inch on the extreme) sometimes varying 8 thousandths in the same letter. I could carefully cut the channels for each letter to match as best I can the thickness of each one. Or I wonder if a better plan would be to double-stick tape them to a board and gang sand them to a more uniform thickness? My thinking is to split any remaining differences from that sanding by routing the channels deep enough so that as little shell-surface sanding would have to be done. (Mind you, I may be overthinking something I know nothing about --that's never happened before...!)
I also found that the letters I received weren't an accurate match to the original drawing. I had hoped to cut the channels using a CNC router. After cutting the pockets for the letters, I experimented with tailoring them with a Dremel. I wasn't finding this workable and finally checked the inlay against the drawing and saw that there is some difference; to the extent that using the CNC process off of the original drawings isn't saving much time and effort at all. So I may simply work on cutting the pockets in without the CNC.
Another question: I read about the possibility of cutting shell out with a CNC router. If that is do-able, I would give it a try. Do any of you do that? Where do you buy your mother of pearl blanks?
Thanks!!