Here’s a shot of the section with all the cut pieces done. I didn’t have to number any of these because the pieces were of sufficiently different sizes and shapes that when I glued them to the wax paper it was easy to see where they went.

The next step was to fill the areas that were going to be black. Usually I’ll cut these shapes from ebony or use ebony dust then superglue, but some of these areas were too small to cut, and what was left wasn’t always the exact outline of the underlying drawing (this is why undercutting is important). Sometimes ebony dust and glue isn’t the best way to go, for various reasons, so I’m trying something new, and using a fabric dye instead.

From what I’ve seen so far, the glue thoroughly wicks throughout the matrix of particles, leaving no dry sections like ebony dust sometimes will. My concern at the moment is that it will stain the surrounding holly when I level the inlay, so I’m having Kevin Ryan send me a scrap of holly to test before I make any more of these sections this way. Here’s hoping I don’t have to recut this one.

The next step is to heap some dye into the cavities of the inlay, and rub it in with a finger, then clean the residual dye from around the perimeter. The stuff is a dry powder, but it stains my hands pretty easily, and takes a while to clean off.

Once that was taken care of, I dripped superglue onto the top of the inlay and let it wick through the whole piece and let it dry overnight.

This morning I pried the whole thing off the wax paper with a modified biscuit flipper and cleaned off the excess glue and slightly sanded the underside, which you can see here. There’s still more to do to this, but not until I’m further along with some other sections. The top will definitely be better looking than the underside. I wonder if Eadfrith had his doubts about it when he was halfway through the manuscript. Things don’t look as nice at this stage as when it’s all cleaned up and engraved and has a finish on it.

By the last week in December I managed to move enough jobs out of the shop so I could have some unfettered time to get back to the Lindisfarne inlays.

Here’s what I have cut so far. This is the underside of everything, which will give you an idea of the colors, as the top is still covered with the paper drawing glued to each piece.

This time I started with the top section of the letter “L”, which has many series of interlocking curls. Here’s a shot of the color coded drawing copies which will each be incised from the paper and glued to their corresponding materials.

When all the sections are glued to the material I can begin cutting them out. I use different size blades depending on the needs of the design or material, usually 3/0, but also 4/0 or 6/0.

Cutting the individual pieces had to be exact or everything will shift off the pattern when I glue things together. This means slightly undercutting each piece so there’s no black outline whatsoever. Easier said than done. In an ideal world I’d be able to cut each outline in half lengthwise, and everything would fit together perfectly, but those lines are less than .010″ wide, and even with decent magnification, there are still some areas that are a couple thousandths wider than they should be. Splitting hairs, you may say, but that’s approximately what I’m trying to do, and at this level it does make for some pieces that won’t fit. Here you can see most of the cut pieces for this section.

And here almost all the pieces are glued into place on top of wax paper which is over the drawing. Not only does this method allow correct placement of everything, but it also shows me if I missed cutting anything.

There are a lot of empty spaces here that will be filled with black mastic. I’ll show that process when I get to it.

I got so tired of continually blowing off the dust from around the saw/ material interface that I hooked up this apparatus to do it for me. Plastics like Plexiglas and recon stone seem to have more propensity than shell or metal to clump up on top of the drawing while I’m cutting. I’m not sure if there’s a slight electromagnetic field or if they’re just gummier, but I’m not into hyperventilating just to get the dust away from the cutting lines. This tube hooks up to my little airbrush compressor and blows all the dust away on the downstroke of the saw without getting in the way (too much - there’s always some tradeoff). I take it off when I’m using the router, because the hose then fits into the back of the base to blow dust from there and into the vacuum. The air pressure isn’t strong enough to blow the dust out into the room, which is what I’m trying to avoid with the vacuum system. I’ll probably add a small rubber tip to the end of the copper pipe so it won’t whack me in the fingernail occasionally.

Happy New Year.