Gary Morris
Established Member
This is my first Intarsia piece. I’m semi happy with it, it could be a lot better and hopefully I can improve with practice and look back at it in the future. With that said I thourghally enjoyed making it.
The choice of wood was down to what I had already, and what I could get to the thickness required, I only have a Draper table saw and hand saw. The head, inner head and nose are all made from Mahogany. The eyes are Ebony. (I found the Ebony very, very hard to shape – I tried to use the round over bit in my router, but nearly lost a digit, so resorted to hand sanding) The Outer body is also Mahogany, the inner body is unknown as there was no ID on when bought. The feet are Mopani, which was also very hard to sand after routing it.
The finish is one of the mistakes I made. After final sanding the head and outer body with 400 grit, I noticed that there were a lot of ‘pin holes’ so I bought some grain filler, applied it and sanded it down, the result left a lot of unattractive white lines in the wood. I’d read somewhere that a red dye added to the filler would give the wood a more woody appearance, unfortunately I added too much dye and the result was a very embarrassed Penguin, either that or she was blushing. I guess I could have persevered and tried to remove more of her blushes but decided to leave it, in fear of making it worse. The whole body was treated to shellac sanding sealer and lightly rubbed down, the finish (apart from the eyes was Fiddes ‘Rugger’ Brown, the eyes were Shellacked thrice to give a shine. She was mounted on a ply backing piece and routed at an angle. I’m not sure if I should give her a coat of lacquer.
I defiantly need much, much more practice and try to remember and take in what I’ve been told or / read. ( I think the retaining bolts for my memory may have a stripped thread or two)
Hope this hasn’t bored you too much, any comments, be they good or bad would be more than welcome.
The pattern was adapted from one of Jim Mex's which I did using Inkscape.
Gary
The choice of wood was down to what I had already, and what I could get to the thickness required, I only have a Draper table saw and hand saw. The head, inner head and nose are all made from Mahogany. The eyes are Ebony. (I found the Ebony very, very hard to shape – I tried to use the round over bit in my router, but nearly lost a digit, so resorted to hand sanding) The Outer body is also Mahogany, the inner body is unknown as there was no ID on when bought. The feet are Mopani, which was also very hard to sand after routing it.
The finish is one of the mistakes I made. After final sanding the head and outer body with 400 grit, I noticed that there were a lot of ‘pin holes’ so I bought some grain filler, applied it and sanded it down, the result left a lot of unattractive white lines in the wood. I’d read somewhere that a red dye added to the filler would give the wood a more woody appearance, unfortunately I added too much dye and the result was a very embarrassed Penguin, either that or she was blushing. I guess I could have persevered and tried to remove more of her blushes but decided to leave it, in fear of making it worse. The whole body was treated to shellac sanding sealer and lightly rubbed down, the finish (apart from the eyes was Fiddes ‘Rugger’ Brown, the eyes were Shellacked thrice to give a shine. She was mounted on a ply backing piece and routed at an angle. I’m not sure if I should give her a coat of lacquer.
I defiantly need much, much more practice and try to remember and take in what I’ve been told or / read. ( I think the retaining bolts for my memory may have a stripped thread or two)
Hope this hasn’t bored you too much, any comments, be they good or bad would be more than welcome.
The pattern was adapted from one of Jim Mex's which I did using Inkscape.
Gary
