Kevin sent the body, and it’s as beautiful as I imagined it would be.  There are two coats of sealer on the back so hopefully I can get most of the leveling done without grinding any sanding dust into the grain of the holly.  The top and sides need to be protected while I deal with the back inlay, so I cover them with poster board and tape.

The next step is to spray some adhesive on the underside of one of the drawing copies and smooth it down onto the back, making certain it’s exactly where I want it.  There isn’t much room on either side of the waist, and the bottom border has to be perpendicular to the center line of the back.

All the red ink on there is covering the areas that I don’t want to rout.  Once I get going, it’s sometimes difficult to see what needs cutting and which side of the line I’m supposed to be on, so this method alleviates a lot of stress and mistakes.

Now, with as much light as possible I begin by routing the perimeter of everything with a .020″ diameter end mill at .040″ deep.   The back is at least .085″ thick, but I usually inlay thin material because it’s easier to work with and is lighter than the standard .060″ material.  You’ll notice in this shot that there’s a dental exam light on the right (from the 70’s - remember that burnt orange color?), a 100 watt halogen lamp on the left, a small LED light in the router base and two LED spotlights on my QED headset.  If I could have more without raising the temperature of my shopto uncomfortable levels I would.

Once the outlines are done I change to a larger end mill and remove the bulk of the wood from the center.  This part goes much quicker than the perimeter work, but I have to make sure that my router base always has a surface to sit on or the bit will plunge all the way through the back.  Here’s a shot of the completed routing.

After checking to make sure everything fits I begin to glue in the inlay one section at a time, using the low ceiling of my shop as a go deck.  Most of this inlay went in with epoxy so I’d have sufficient time to maneuver the dowels in place and not have to worry about the glue drying before the pieces were flush.  Small pieces were glued in with cyanoacrylate.

Twenty-four hours later I was ready to sand it down.  All the shell and metal in the inlay were .040″ thick, so they were at the level of the surface of the back, but more fragile materials like wood and acrylics were cut from thicker stock.  Here’s a shot showing just how much had to be sanded off.

And the sanding process, like all my other inlays, had to be done with a hand block, not power sanders, or things could heat up in the inlay and pop out, or the glue underneath could expand with the heat that’s generated from staying on one area too long and push up pieces of inlay as I’m sanding them.  I didn’t want to have to go back at this juncture and recut anything.  It was hard enough to make  this the first time, but repairing it would be a nightmare.  so here’s how I leveled it.

And a shot of it almost leveled.  The left side is pretty much done, but the right side needs to come down some more.

It’s beginning to take shape, but there’s a lot of detailing left.  On the original manuscript there are thousands of red dots either surrounding letters or in grid patterns between them.  Eadfrith painted them.  I’m going to drill holes and push in copper wire.  Here you can see the process, as well as some filigree that needs to be routed with a .010″ end mill.

Here’s the back with all the holes drilled and about a third of them filled with the wire.

Once that’s over with and the back is sanded again, down to 400 grit, there is painting and engraving to do.  Some of the letters have the interiors painted, as well as the filigree to the left of “ER” near the top.  I attempted to get close to the tones on the original, but then realized they didn’t match the materials I used in the inlay, so I tried to stay within the spirit of the project rather than make an exact copy.  There are reds, greens and gold to do, as well as some gold leaf, which will be the absolute last thing I do to this before getting it back to Kevin.

I sanded the paint just a bit to lighten it somewhat.  The lacquer finish will darken everything.  All that’s left for me to do is gold leaf the areas inside the “R”, “N”, “U”, and “X”.

Oh, and I put my logo inside the body, next to where Kevin’s label will be.

On to the next project!

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