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I love working with mother of pearl. It is an art form that has nearly endless possibilities. If you are wondering what all the white stuff is, please allow me to explain. The photo in the middle is of a freshly cut inlay. The piece of wood on which it rests is the surface of the "V" block clamped to the work bench. It allows the jewelers saw to cut the pearl and support the fragile piece of shell blank. The photo on the left shows the spaces on the fingerboard that will receive the inlays. These spaces have been painted white and alignment has been made with a straight line and a pencil to ensure symmetry, and the inlay is glued onto the dry water based finger-paint, and not the rosewood itself. This allows you to scribe around the piece (carefully) with a very sharp instrument until you have a good clean outline in the dry paint. The paint also serves another important purpose as It will allow you to gently pry the inlay off the fingerboard without as much risk of damage to the pieces of pearl because it's the paint it's glued to, not the wood. Pretty slick! And the photograph to the right is a section of the fingerboard that has been scribed and the pearl gently removed by getting up under the pearl with an Exact-o knife and slowly working it loose. Note: The pearl pieces are SPOT GLUED ONLY, and only in enough areas as is necessary to keep in down long enough to scribe around it. Superglue is what I use for this and only in the tiniest drops. Here is the scribe I use. It's a dental scraper that has been modified with a shorter, narrower edge. This allows me to negotiate tight corners and intricate shapes easier.
The photo beside the scribe is one of the Dremel tool at work with a dental burr being used as a cutting bit. I am working my way around the detailed outside of the scribe line first with this small bit. After all the scribe lines are complete, I'll switch to a little larger bit to take care of the inside. Note; you need to set the depth of the cut slightly shallow of the pearl's thickness, and remember, all the pearl may not be the same thickness so double check each inlay before turning on the machine. The flex shaft attachment is secured into a homemade miniature router bass with a see-through Plexiglass bass. The piece of maple is scrap from the shop, and it's rather simple to construct. You simply match the hole so the flex shaft passes through with the proper sized drill bit plus about 1/32". The set screw in the front is a shop find, too. You simply drill the hole in the front for it slightly smaller and leave enough meat in the wood of the front to gain good purchase on the threads. Simply glue the bass on (more scrap) with Duco cement. The cost is little or nothing in material, and about 30 minutes in the time required to cut the parts out and assemble, and if it breaks build another one. This one has held up nicely through about 40 inlay projects so far. This simple tool is easy to work with. It is very inexpensive to build, and in my opinion, works better than the plastic basses you can purchase for your Dremel for this type of work. Here is another angle of the tool, and some end results.
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