Doug Shepard
07-13-2005, 4:23 PM
This is a log of an inlay design using ebony and holly. Bought the wood on eBay and took the design from a Hopi Indian symbol "Tapu'a" or Mother Earth representing spiritual rebirth. There's more info on other Native American symbols on this site if anyone's interested http://www.aaanativearts.com/article902.html
This is eventually getting inlaid on a jewelry box project with some southwest motifs. This was a first for me with either ebony or holly and both turned out nice to work with.
I bandsawed the wood at about 3/32-1/8" then planed them down to 1/16". I just dont trust my bandsaw, setup, or technique enough to try for consistent thickness slices at the finished thickness so I end up cutting fat then flattening the cut face afterward. I was determined to figure out a way to do it without using carrier boards through the thickness planer or Performax. I ended up double-face taping two scrap pieces of 1/16" laminate to MDF on either side of the wood and using it as guide rails to plane the wood down level with the laminate. I used a combination of the LN LA-Jack and the LN Std and LA adjustable mouth block planes. The ebony seemed to like the Std angle block plane the best but responded well to all three. The holly seemed to slightly prefer either of the two LA planes.
I didn't want end grain showing so everything's glued up with edge grain showing on the face. That means that internally there are some end-grain glue joints, but as the whole slice will get glued in later I don't think that's a problem. As it turns out, I may not end up using this piece and treat it as a practice run. One corner of this log came out slightly out of square and I think it's maybe a bit too noticeable.I think it was due partially to uneven clamping pressure during glue up, and a little too agressive planing when I trimmed some of the intermediate layers to the block. I'm also thinking it looks bigger than I thought it would and maybe I need to do a little bit smaller version anyway.
In the process of making this, I made the following observations:
- Not having a workbench stinks. Gotta do something about that one of these days.
- Lie-Nielsen planes are a real pleasure to use. I knew that already, but both block planes are relatively recent additions and I hadn't put them to serious use yet. It all came back to me though.
- Ebony is almost a joy to plane as long as you keep re-sharpening. Pulling up long black curls is a new one for me - different, but kind of cool at the same time. And the finish looks like black glass after planing. It doesn't really seem to have a grain direction either. It planes the same regardless of which direction you're going. Once you're down in the 1/16" thick range though, it does tend to get a little brittle. The holly didn't have as much tendency to crack and split at 1/16" and planed just as nicely as the ebony but did have a grain direction preference.
- Thickness planing by hand in a 90 degree humid shop just aint no fun. After the first day of this sauna shop, I broke down and ordered a Wagner Saf-T-Planer from Luthier's Mercantile - more for other inlay veneer thicknessing coming down the pike. It wouldn't get here in time for me to use (much) on this log, so I continued sweating it out with the hand planes.
So my mini-gloat is the Saf-T-Planer which showed up before I had to thin another piece of ebony for the outer perimeter. Thought I'd give it a spin, and was reasonably happy with it. It does work well for very thin stuff and truly does seem to be "Saf". There is a minor tendency to pull into the cutterhead, but it's very slight and easily controllable. It does leave rotary cutting marks though, so I think the trick for me is to use it to rough the thickness down to a hair above the target thickness then switch to handplanes and scrapers to clean things up. It was still an awful lot faster than doing the whole thing by hand though. This was a right-out-of-the-box assessment, and I think it's probably capable of getting a smoother surface (w/out as many swirl marks) had I taken the time to rig up a proper jig to hold the veneer flatter while using the Wagner.
So the pics are:
Big piles of holly and ebony curls.
Various stages in the log construction
The Wagner unit
The Wagnered ebony
China - giving me her best "are ya done yet" look.
BTW - If I do decide to use this, I'm only going to need a few slices off this log. If anyone wants one, PM me with your address.
This is eventually getting inlaid on a jewelry box project with some southwest motifs. This was a first for me with either ebony or holly and both turned out nice to work with.
I bandsawed the wood at about 3/32-1/8" then planed them down to 1/16". I just dont trust my bandsaw, setup, or technique enough to try for consistent thickness slices at the finished thickness so I end up cutting fat then flattening the cut face afterward. I was determined to figure out a way to do it without using carrier boards through the thickness planer or Performax. I ended up double-face taping two scrap pieces of 1/16" laminate to MDF on either side of the wood and using it as guide rails to plane the wood down level with the laminate. I used a combination of the LN LA-Jack and the LN Std and LA adjustable mouth block planes. The ebony seemed to like the Std angle block plane the best but responded well to all three. The holly seemed to slightly prefer either of the two LA planes.
I didn't want end grain showing so everything's glued up with edge grain showing on the face. That means that internally there are some end-grain glue joints, but as the whole slice will get glued in later I don't think that's a problem. As it turns out, I may not end up using this piece and treat it as a practice run. One corner of this log came out slightly out of square and I think it's maybe a bit too noticeable.I think it was due partially to uneven clamping pressure during glue up, and a little too agressive planing when I trimmed some of the intermediate layers to the block. I'm also thinking it looks bigger than I thought it would and maybe I need to do a little bit smaller version anyway.
In the process of making this, I made the following observations:
- Not having a workbench stinks. Gotta do something about that one of these days.
- Lie-Nielsen planes are a real pleasure to use. I knew that already, but both block planes are relatively recent additions and I hadn't put them to serious use yet. It all came back to me though.
- Ebony is almost a joy to plane as long as you keep re-sharpening. Pulling up long black curls is a new one for me - different, but kind of cool at the same time. And the finish looks like black glass after planing. It doesn't really seem to have a grain direction either. It planes the same regardless of which direction you're going. Once you're down in the 1/16" thick range though, it does tend to get a little brittle. The holly didn't have as much tendency to crack and split at 1/16" and planed just as nicely as the ebony but did have a grain direction preference.
- Thickness planing by hand in a 90 degree humid shop just aint no fun. After the first day of this sauna shop, I broke down and ordered a Wagner Saf-T-Planer from Luthier's Mercantile - more for other inlay veneer thicknessing coming down the pike. It wouldn't get here in time for me to use (much) on this log, so I continued sweating it out with the hand planes.
So my mini-gloat is the Saf-T-Planer which showed up before I had to thin another piece of ebony for the outer perimeter. Thought I'd give it a spin, and was reasonably happy with it. It does work well for very thin stuff and truly does seem to be "Saf". There is a minor tendency to pull into the cutterhead, but it's very slight and easily controllable. It does leave rotary cutting marks though, so I think the trick for me is to use it to rough the thickness down to a hair above the target thickness then switch to handplanes and scrapers to clean things up. It was still an awful lot faster than doing the whole thing by hand though. This was a right-out-of-the-box assessment, and I think it's probably capable of getting a smoother surface (w/out as many swirl marks) had I taken the time to rig up a proper jig to hold the veneer flatter while using the Wagner.
So the pics are:
Big piles of holly and ebony curls.
Various stages in the log construction
The Wagner unit
The Wagnered ebony
China - giving me her best "are ya done yet" look.
BTW - If I do decide to use this, I'm only going to need a few slices off this log. If anyone wants one, PM me with your address.