Green & Green Blacker House armchair - part VI

Decorating the center splat!

With limited experience with inlay, I looked forward to this next phase with excitement and some trepidation.  The center splat has a lot of splash.  I knew it would take some time and I was right.  Now, someone said that the craft of woodworking consists of being able to cut to the line (and you are an artist if you cut beyond the line as you are then in unchartered territory).  Cutting to the line is tough if you cannot see the line!  Consequently, much of my struggle with the inlay was dealing with lighting and attempting to see the scribe line.  Well, half way through the inlay process I broke down and ordered an Optivisor DA-4 from Stewart-Macdonald.  They arrived just just when I finished the center splat.  No problem, as I have already used the Optivisor going forward.


First I chopped and routed out the various negative spaces.  Negative space is just as critical in the design of a piece as the positive space, and the Green & Green designs are wonderful in their mastery of negative space.

I really like those 2 squigglys!  It takes some confidence to take a beautiful piece and throw in some squigglys here and there.  I may have been able to come up with something like those in 4th grade - but now after years of software engineering my artistic expression has become ossified by too much precision - so exploring the artist free-expression of these old masters is liberating.  Now, one could argue, by attempting to reproduce and copy this original, that I'm striving towards too much accuracy (in contrast to precision).  However, I'm learning a lot about design here so I think it is worth the investment.

Next are the tulip vines.  I'm using white oak here.  I think the originals were white oak as well.  I used double stick tape to hold the vines while scribing.  Since they are so thin I would have obtained a better result by using an acetone based model airplane glue (i.e. duco cement). Those that do guitar inlay will use duco cement then release the piece with a bit of acetone. 

After the glue dried I hand planed the vines level with the surface.  I had to go and fill in a few gaps with glue and dust.  Next time I will sand the surface during the initial glue up to fill in the gaps.

Next are the various small pieces at the base of the vines.  I think the original chair may have used purple heart (not sure).  I used silver - for some extra splash.  I have some 14 gauge silver wire that I bought from Rio Grande.  I took the wire and hammered a flat surface above and below.  After cutting to various lengths using an electricians wire cutter I clamped the small rectangular silver with a piece of wood and filed the ends square.

Here are the pieces cut and layed out to plan:

Now, scribing would be difficult with double stick tape.  I could use duco cement then release with acetone.  But I was afraid that the acetone would seep into the vine section and do who knows what to the yellow PVA glue holding the vines in place (acetone is some pretty nasty stuff).  Instead, I grabbed a hammer and tapped the silver, leaving a nice impression.  David Price, who does absolutely beautiful carving and metal inlay on gunstocks, uses this technique to inlay silver into gunstocks (see http://www.davidpriceflintlocks.com/ ).  The trick is not to hit too hard and crush the fibers excessively - which I may have done with one or two.

I then took the dremel and routed to the necessary depth (only about 1/16").  I used a knife to shave the edges for final fitting.

Once they were fitted, I did not glue in place.  I need to route out the tulips first since the silver will be slightly proud of the surface and may interfere with the tulip routing.  Consequently, I cut the tulips, used double stick tape to scribe the cut lines, then routed.  The double stick tape worked ok, though one shifted a bit and created a gap which I later had to fill in with glue and dust.

By the way, getting the tulips to look something akin to tulips took more than one attempt!

I did not route to the line (could not see the line well enough).  I routed close and then sliced the edges with a knife.  This worked reasonably well.  Upon receiving my Optivisor I did a test inlay and routed directly to the line no problem - and with better results.  Its nice being able to see things clearly.

For glue up, I started with the silver using thick super-glue.  After drying overnight I leveled the silver with a file (protecting the surrounding wood with tape).  After that, I then glued the tulips in place.  The tulips are proud of the surface by a about a 1/32, then rounded close to the surface at the edges for a nice pillow effect (I used a shallow carving gouge and sandpaper for this).

 

Now, the tulips in the original chair has some texture with a carving gouge.  I took a gouge and highlighted the tips a bit:

Except for some light sanding here and there, the splats are done!