Pearl inlay on spruce?

[Antlurz]

Been considering a different way to finish off an oval soundhole. Never done any pearl inlay on spruce, and it's obvious it presents a whole new world of problems. Unlike ebony where you just fake it one way or the other when you make a mistake. Seems like not much room for error here. This would be pearl, directly butted up to the spruce.

Wondering what the hot setup is for temporarily gluing down the inlay to get the scribe lines started, and yet be able to pull it back up without leaving glue residue to mess up the later stain on the soundboard.

And later gluing it down with any imperfections being masked/filled as much as possible.

I'm sure there are a dozen other problems I haven't even considered yet.

Ron

[Dennis Russell]

Hello: I just finished a oval sound hole using mother of pearl, it didnt come out very well, I had to use my imagination as I went along. I didnt have a jig for dremel to route out chanel for MOP. I had to go back about quarter of inch from edge of cut out Oval hole that I already cut out,, first mistake" I should have done all the routing and cutting before cutting out hole. It was so ragged that I had to use a sharp knife and small chisels to get near as possible to what I wanted.
I cut out the MOP with last of my jewelers saw blades, ended up using a dremel sanding drum to finish up and lay MOP in the groove, and it was in pieces so I had to match up cuts. Finally after two days of work and a whole new vocabulary of cuss words I got it glued up, but the lines were still ragged.
I decided to border the slots around MOP with BWB violin purfling, then decided to do the inside of MOP next to oval hole with violin purfling. I put two coats of sanding sealer down in holidays of small crevices and inperfections. It came out very nice,, after sanding the top and glueing onto the mandolin it looks real nice, after several coats of lacquer it is satisfying to me.
this mandolin is a small tear drop has small skinny neck, I repaired the top because it was set next to a swamp cooler and got wet caused the top to rise off the ribs and seperate. It dried out and and certain area,s crackd out so much that I decide a new top was in the plans. It belongs to a old freind who bought it for his seven year old grand son, so he can learn Mandolin. I wish I had this digital camera working I would send you a picture... Dennis In Arizona

[Antlurz]

Sounds like a nice ending after a big headache!

Ron

[sunburst]

A few tips:

You can glue the pearl down, temporarily with Duco cement, and have a decent chance of removing it without taking splinters out of the spruce too bad, but, if you scribe around the pearl with an exacto knife, pretty deep into the pearl, you will have cut the fibers, and you can remove the pearl easily without long splinters coming up.
I'm not the most accurate person in the world with a Dremel in a router base, so I prefer to excavate for inlay in spruce by hand. If I scribe deeply around the pearl with the thin exacto knife, remove the temporarily glued pearl, and chisel out the spruce with gravers and home-made chisels made from exacto blades, I feel much safer, and get cleaner results. Keep in mind that the pearl is very hard, and will establish the line. The spruce is relatively soft, and will conform to the line established by the pearl, as long as you don't cut your cavity too big. In other words, if the pearl fits slightly tight, you get a clean line, established by the pearl. If the cavity is too big, the line won't look clean. There's very little room for error.

Another thing to be aware of:
Because of the hardness difference between pearl and spruce, it's difficult to sand the inlay level. About the only thing that works is using a large, hard (wood, not rubber) sanding block, and sanding very lightly for a very long time. The harder you bear down in an attempt to sand faster, the more the spruce will sand below the level of the spruce.

[Antlurz]

Any suggestions about the best glue to use to keep away from any discoloration or problems with staining from glue contamination?

Regardlees of how particular and meticulous one is, there will be that invariable glue smudge to cause headaches.

As far as using a Dremel on this, what I have in mind would almost preclude one from using one on it. Would almost have to use hand made cutters instead.

Ron

[sunburst]

Hot hide glue and superglue are the best for leaving spruce the same color it was. Glueing in the pearl while you still have some thickness to sand away helps with glue "smudges" that might cause staining problems later. There's also the option of sealing before staining.

[Antlurz]

I've never done any sealing under stain, but rather just work with the raw wood grain. It would seem to me that a seal coat would kill most, if not all of your ability to enhance grain by working it in and taking it back off. Or isn't that the case? Doesn't sealing it primarily leave you with just the ability to surface stain as opposed to working deeper in the grain?

My first thought would be it works against you to highlight a heavy figure in the wood.


Ron

[sunburst]

That's all pretty much correct. I don't seal before I stain, so I can't tell you much about it, but I can say that you can look in the post-a-picture-of-your-mandolin thread and see many examples of beautiful stain jobs done by those who do.
Spruce, for the most part, can tend to look blotchy if you try to enhance the grain with stains. That technique is mostly used for figured hard woods. I just mentioned it as a possible way to even out the stain over areas that have glue in the wood.

[Antlurz]

Yup. I was mostly talking generically about enhancing figure, although this particular one is a wild bearclaw, so that might get involved, somewhat.

Ron