Paua abalone shell inlay

[Loudspeakerboy]

I am building a Baritone Ukulele for my wife. One of her nicknames is "Wombat". So I have done a Wombat inlay in the ebony headplate of her instrument. Cutting the pocket in the ebony was a breeze. However.. To hold the piece abalone in place during cutting, I had to glue the small piece to a piece of scrap wood, and clamp it overnight. I used LMII's luthiers glue because it dries super hard unlike standard yellow glues which tend to dry softer. The little toes of the Wombat are about 1mm x 2mm, so the glue needed to be hard. I used the nesting function in Vcarve to maximise material use. I also used the "use first vector as boundary" in the "Nesting" window (there is a good tutorial on the http://www.Vectric.com site. I was actually able to hold the piece of abalone shell up to the computer display (The piece of abalone was an odd shape), and draw a polyline around it. The dimensions and angles were exactly the same when compared. Who knew?? Last week I ordered up the precision collet set and their new optimized shell cutting bits from http://www.precisebits.com . Excellent product! Very happy! To get the cut pieces of shell off of the scrap piece of wood, I simply placed it in a bowl of warm water. 10 minutes later...

Cheers, M

[Kryptik]

A beautiful image of a sump killer !! Lovely work.
I've been sitting on a piece of quarter sawn Queen? ebony for a few years that I picked up at the Sydney Working With Wood show, waiting for the right project to use it in.

[Loudspeakerboy]

Sump killer..?

[Kryptik]

Aah, sorry
Not pulling your leg, like Drop Bears..
A wombat is about the size of 2 basket balls, and is solid muscle, as they dig their burrows. Basically a large rock with legs.
Coming around a corner at night at 100KPH+, and you catch one in your headlights on the road and they freeze, if you can't avoid it you not only kill the wombat, but it has the short lived satisfaction of knowing that it has probably caused major structural damage to the front end of your car, usually steering/suspension components, and more often than not, it has caused major damage to your sump, especially on the older 6 and 8 cylinder cars where they were very prominent under the front.

Hope that sheds some light for you Most of our wildlife can kill you one way or another, they just look cute and cuddly...they never show Skippy rearing up on her tail and dis-embowelling someone with with her claws, it's how they fight. A roo through the windscreen is not a pleasant way to go, they tend to thrash a lot.

Then of course...the dingo... 'nuff said

[Loudspeakerboy]

LOL!!

Thanks for the clarification..

Sump, usually = Oil pan in the States..

Cheers! Michael

[sk8nmike]

Realy good work on the inlay.

[Bob]

OK Kryptic,
I've got to ask, what are, " Drop Bears.." ?

And sk8nmike, I really like that inlay.
Bob

[Kryptik]

Haven't heard that one Bob ?
It's a myth / taking the piss thing that Aussies tell you guys when we're over there
It basically alludes to Koalas launching themselves out of trees at your head and attacking you.
Trust me, if we had something that weighed up to 20Kg, with enough muscle and claws to run up a large tree in 10 seconds with a baby on its back jumping out of trees to attack, we would have culled them to extinction by now
That being said, trying to pick one up, or patting one if it's low down in a tree is a do at own risk procedure. (See previous about claws and muscles)
While wombats are prickly and nasty tempered by nature, Koalas are pretty placid, unless with young, hurt, or just don't want to be touched...

Then there's brown snakes, funnel web spiders, the blue ring octopus...all real, all very lethal. Put another shrimp on the barby..just check for red backs first