A spot of mother of pearl inlaying.

[Wal]

Andrew,

Thanks for your kind words, I'll be posting about that Dream or Die piece in the next few minutes as there are a couple of questions I have regarding grain filler... Anyway, I buy my cutters from APT in Glasgow. I use ordinary two-flute carbide cutters - the same as I use for aluminium/brass/wood. Heh - they seem to work for everything! A couple of links:

https://www.shop-apt.co.uk/end-mills...d-carbide.html
https://www.shop-apt.co.uk/micro-dia...ide-60hrc.html

Feeds and speeds are very conservative when using the smaller cutter - less than 0.6mm and I'm running around 1-1.5mm/sec - yep, very slow but luckily inlays tend to be pretty small so it's not too much of an issue. The larger 52mm surfacing tool I use is from Wealden:

https://www.wealdentool.com/acatalog/Surface-Trim.html

Francis - that's an awesome looking headstock - that WorkBee is certainly doing the business for you! Good call on the MDF - I take it that you don't get any issues with fibres sticking to the back of the inlay pieces?

Wal.

[fwm891]

Thanks Wal - no any fibres that do stick a light rub on fine wet-n-dry removes them - I use APT as well for my cutters - very prompt service.

[the great waldo]

Hi Wal
Thanks for the links, i'll check them out.Your right about the slow speed. I cut my surname out on Sunday (12 Letters Polish name !) 6 passes with a 0.5mm cutter must have taken 45 mins. My cutters are a bit long so I didn't want to push them too much. The cutters on the apt site are a little short on the 0.5mm dia, only 1mm deep my pearl is usually 1.5mm thick. That surfacing cutter looks really useful.

Cheers

Andrew

[Wal]

Hi Wal
Thanks for the links, i'll check them out.Your right about the slow speed. I cut my surname out on Sunday (12 Letters Polish name !) 6 passes with a 0.5mm cutter must have taken 45 mins. My cutters are a bit long so I didn't want to push them too much. The cutters on the apt site are a little short on the 0.5mm dia, only 1mm deep my pearl is usually 1.5mm thick. That surfacing cutter looks really useful.

Cheers

Andrew

Andrew, they also stock long necks:

https://www.shop-apt.co.uk/2-flute-l...lls-68hrc.html

Wal.

Sent from my HTC One M9 using Tapatalk

[the great waldo]

Hi Wal.
Thanks for that, I'll have to give my plastic friend a bashing.
Cheers.
Andrew

[MaineGeezer]

I've done a bit of MOP machining as well, also for guitar inlays. Your technique of gluing the blanks to a plate for machining sounds excellent. I made a small fixture from aluminum to hold a 1" x 1.5" MOP blank. as shown in the photo. I cut out a lizard figure, and cut the corresponding pocket to inlay it into. There is a photo of a finished inlay, although this one happens to be cut from African blackwood, not MOP;



My apologies for the imperial measurements -- we colonials are rather backward, you know!

[PeteHowlett]

What I do....

[Wal]

SKILLZ..!

Really nice that, Pete.

[MaineGeezer]

Egad. That is lovely.

[PeteHowlett]

Thanks. It took about 3 months from drawing to execution to get it right. If you need pearl I am looking at the possibility of importing it. Just waiting for samples.. UK suppliers are so expensive. I currently buy all my pearl from Australia.