|
|
|
Here are a few photos of the shop, and work in process. In some
of the photos the machine isn't really turned on, but you can see
the set up used. Jewelry boxes are made in batches, with some parts
made in larger quantity at a time than others, so the panels used
for a jewelry box I make now might have been made a year ago, or
even longer.
 |
Our shop is a barn built in 1931, and renovated by Marilyn
and I and a crew of four in 1988. We heat it with a wood stove
and an attached greenhouse that we use for vegetable starts.
It's 30'x 40', and Marilyn's weaving studio is on the second
floor, vying for room with the veneer. Off to the left, you
can see a bit of our house that we built in 1991-2, giving us
a longer commute from the days when we lived upstairs in the
barn (and Marilyn's studio had to compete with the stove and
fridge). |
|
 |
Here's a stack of the components used to make double crescent inlay
banding. The length of these pieces come off the width of the board,
or sometimes, to get the right figure, off the thickness of the board,
glued up many times. I start with squares of the maple, and one side
at a time cove out, and replace with an ebony "fingernail"
as shown in the close-up, lower left. Then I recove with a larger
radius. These pieces are stacked and glued with the maple semi-hemispheres
to form the inner sandwich. |
 |
These ebony pieces are very fragile ( a little more flexible than
pasta, but along those lines), and since they're cross-grain construction
in their length, lots of gluing is required to make the blanks they're
cut from. One can't find wide ebony boards. The outer cove cut strives
to taper the ebony at the corner to less than 1/64". |
 |
Here's the router setup to make the maple semi-hemispheres. Several
hold-downs, profiled to match the stocks surface where necessary.
Inlay banding making of this sort involves machining of end-grain
surfaces, often of fragile components. It's not for the squeamish! |
 |
This is a stack of banding blocks ready to be sliced into 1/16 thick
wafers, a triumphant moment. The pieces are mitred beforehand, as
shown, but are a little longer than necessary, because they must be
cut to a compound angle to mitre properly on their bevels. The work
required to do this and align properly at each corner is very painstaking.
If anyone knows of a shortcut, let me know! |
 |
Here's a finished box corner. Many steps are required to produce
clean, precise detail . |
|
