Back to Work II
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.
