Inlay Day

Today was all about putting the inlay on the peghead. Here's the process... you cut the little pieces out of the pearl blank with a jeweler's saw. This takes a long time b/c pearl is very hard and if you try to push too hard, the very thin saw blades (about the size of flat dental floss) simply break. Pearl dust is fairly toxic, which is why I'm wearing the mask. And the blades and the lines and the pieces of pearl are very small, which is why I'm wearing the Optivisor (those are magnifiers). Then you trace the shapes onto the headstock using either a template or the pieces themselves. And rout out the inlay cavity using a Dremel rotary tool mounted on a router base. The cavity should be a little bit shallower than the depth of the pearl. It takes a while to get it just right... and even so, the cavity will always be a little bit bigger than the piece. Fortunately, this is easy to conceal... pack some ebony dust into the crevices, soak it with superglue, and once it dries, sand the whole thing smooth. Can't even see any gaps around the pieces (and believe me, there were some gaps).

That little upside down V shape in the top inlay piece is actually purfling. We cut the piece where the V is and glued in the purfling. I believe we will also be doing some engraving on the pearl, just to get a little bit of experience doing that. I like doing inlay work. Cutting the pearl is hard to do accurately, but I think I could get better at it. These pieces were shaped somewhat using spindle and belt sanders (and I didn't even lose any fingertips!)... which to me are heavy guns for something so small. The belt sander messed me up... I oversanded one of the edges and spent way too much time trying to balance out the piece so it would still look good. But the routing with the Dremel was fun, and I'm pleased with the result.