Rich L
Member
I've been having "fun" over the past couple of weeks putting this thing together. It takes me a long time because I come close to overthinking a lot of processes before I do them. This is a silver barrel with inlayed mother-of-pearl and structural effect is just like what's done with wood, plastics, and metal. The big challenge was that nothing is compliant, especially the MOP, and I wanted flawless inlays. I got close.
Here's a brief rundown:
Make the barrel - that included drawing down the end to a taper and then hammering the end almost closed. Press in the threaded piece in the other end. The barrel was complete for the next process.
Fill the barrel with epoxy to give strength the the tube for milling and also to give temporary backing to the MOP while finishing the outside
Mill to close tolerance the MOP pieces and liberally glue (CA) them into the slots I milled. There are three solid pieces of MOP in this barrel. Milling parameters were 1/4" high helix mill (using the side), step over was .015, feed about .5 IPM (slow). MOP thickness was ~.175
File and sand off the excess from the outside
Drill out the inside. This was very slow as there was MOP in there and I had to make sure I didn't get too agressive and crack it. I used a dead sharp drill, ran the lathe at 600RPM with a feed of .120IPM (really slow)
Finish sand and polish. 800 - 2500 grit, then white rouge for final cut before red rouge for color.
Take pictures.
I wanted something simple, elegant. Still working on the cap which will not have an inlay the way I like to do them because the wall thickness is too thin and there will be other stuff in there like threads and things. At least things will be there.
Cheers,
Rich
Here's a brief rundown:
Make the barrel - that included drawing down the end to a taper and then hammering the end almost closed. Press in the threaded piece in the other end. The barrel was complete for the next process.
Fill the barrel with epoxy to give strength the the tube for milling and also to give temporary backing to the MOP while finishing the outside
Mill to close tolerance the MOP pieces and liberally glue (CA) them into the slots I milled. There are three solid pieces of MOP in this barrel. Milling parameters were 1/4" high helix mill (using the side), step over was .015, feed about .5 IPM (slow). MOP thickness was ~.175
File and sand off the excess from the outside
Drill out the inside. This was very slow as there was MOP in there and I had to make sure I didn't get too agressive and crack it. I used a dead sharp drill, ran the lathe at 600RPM with a feed of .120IPM (really slow)
Finish sand and polish. 800 - 2500 grit, then white rouge for final cut before red rouge for color.
Take pictures.
I wanted something simple, elegant. Still working on the cap which will not have an inlay the way I like to do them because the wall thickness is too thin and there will be other stuff in there like threads and things. At least things will be there.
Cheers,
Rich
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