Help, please: teach me to inlay?

[Brian Marshall]

Everyone seems to buy that set of pins and holders.

I suppose because they look cool and "official" sitting out on your bench, but I believe that you will find, as time goes on - that they are pretty close to worthless.

I do not think I have actually used ANY of them in 30+ years. (Excepting some really nice, well made antiques for a ring engraving or setting job. Those are double pinned and you need a rawhide mallet to get 'em in and out!)


The ones sold in sets tend to slip, if not used "correctly". And if you do, they ding up the edges of items like the one you are holding in the image - if you put enough "correct" pressure on them.

They REALLY ding up softer metals like brass, copper, silver, gold or platinum!

They wiggle, wobble and roll out of position at just the wrong times. They never quite fit anything perfectly. Your workpiece will bounce around when held in them.


They are a PITA to dust. Feathers from the duster are always getting caught in them...

(Leonard doesn't understand the concept of dusting - just uses a compressor & airgun or hoses everything down with water when dust gets too thick to find the gravers on his bench. Gives him good reason to go out and buy a new set when they disappear into the mud on his shop floor.)


While they will work quite well as a dust collecting paperweight, they don't weigh enough to use as a doorstop.


There is a set here. It's in the collection of 30 or 40 gewgaws that I show students to explain the reasons why they should invest their money in better ways...

Unfortunately, I am usually too late. These pins are one of the first things they think they HAVE to have....


Learn to make proper, solid, reusable fixtures that DO NOT damage your work in any way.

And fixturing for inlay is more problematical than for "ordinary" engraving anyway.

You want NO flexibility or bounce at all. Zip, zero - is ideal. Get as close as you can to that.


Yes, you can fix the damage caused by pins most of the time, but why go there in the first place?


Brian


Simple rule of thumb regarding the use of pins and holders like these.

If you wouldn't choose to use them for the exact same item made of polished pewter - stay the hell away from them.

Find a better way... and that way usually involves making fixtures yourself.

 

[Marrinan]

Danae, Check this out, it is my favorite, Fred http://www.engravingforum.com/showthread.php?t=1494

 

[Brian Marshall]

Yep Fred, that was one of the best threads ever put on an engraving forum!

Those images of Phil's work will make you spend at least an hour a day studying them. Every day. For months... and come back to them every year.


Brian


Somebody needs to warn Leonard to stay away from it though. The "birds" illustrated on quite a few of these pieces are so well done that he might have to be hospitalized if he sees them...

(In the kind of hospital that offers custom fitted jackets to every patient and the walls of all the guest rooms are made of rubber.)

It's a rare disease, that anatidaephobia - and they say there is no cure for it.

 

[dlilazteca]

Ok sterling next to Damascus is fine... pure silver would be better.

Only pure silver or gold with blue.

Heat gold til it warms to a faint red in a dark room and let air cool.

Heat pure silver til sharpie marker disappears. Air cool.

I just tried making teeth in the bottom to hold the silver.. epic failure. Nothing tooth like at all happened. Back to study.

The issues I had when it did not hold were the teeth holding it or the material not being annealed, when annealing larger amounts of wire, it is hard to judge the temperature being applied evenly, I use a diving board method for thinner wire to keep from melting it, you can read it in the following link, also I use a brass punch that is textured, the texture hold the gold when punching it in, helps to keep it from growing on you, you can accomplish this by tapping it on a course lap, or sandpaper, Mckenzie just cut some cross hatching on the brass tip itself. I hope this helps, make sure you anneal correctly.

here is the link

http://www.engraverscafe.com/showthread.php?8195-Easy-annealing-of-precious-metal&

 

[Brian Marshall]

The diving board method works fine for small batches of annealing.

Not always so well when you are acually diving off of one yourself. In which case you might have an "issue" with how your head "resonates" when you crack it on the bottom of the pool. That was the last time I used one...


Alloyed golds can be a problem. Specifically white or red... one suggestion is to use alcohol to quench those, but there is a danger that you will set the alcohol on fire... which can then become a big "issue" - if you are not used to alcohol bench fires. I simply cover the jar, sometimes with my hand if the cover is not handy. Ends that "issue" right away...

If you work in a shop where you actually make things you may have access to a kiln, which, with a temperature readout makes the job quite a bit easier.


Or you can construct a small open fronted annealling oven of sorts out of firebricks. You get a better, more even heat saturation for ingots that are headed for the rolling mill or need another round of annealing before they go back through the mill.

It has the advantage of being quick - you are using a rosebud torchtip and don't have to wait for the kiln to get to temp. But you have to have had some "eyeballing" experience in order to get consistant results.

Mine will take maybe a 4" X 6" sheet as well as ingots. There is a small water (or alcohol) container on the bench next to it and a two gallon bucket of water on the floor for the bigger stuff.


And another way (which involves some forethought) is to slip whatever you need to anneal into your casting kiln when ithe cycle is about over and coming back down to casting temp.

The only "issue" there is gonna be space to fit it in and maybe some flaking off the stainless flasks.

Not a problem with the pure metals, but the stainless flakes can discolor sterling and some gold alloy sheet. Especially if you have coated the piece in flux beforehand...


Brian

 

[Dani Girl]

Ok. Sorry about the ugly leaf. Have I got the theory right.?

 

[Dani Girl]

I am using a normal flat with the corners blunted a little on the heel by sliding back on the stone with the graver rolled over slightly.

I will give it another go soon in a home made jig

 

[Dani Girl]

 

[Native-engraver]

This is very helpful, and well explained. Thanks Steve.

 

[Dani Girl]

I am fully expecting this won't work out first try but I am learning things from it. I am working today on an inlay using copper wire and doing a pocket in a pocket knife through half the pivot pin and I was going to try niobium wire but I am going to use copper for this one and then come back to the niobium. (Any tips on annealing and in laying niobium)? I will put lots of pics up tonight.

 

[mitch]

hi Dani- i have zero experience with niobium and nearly none with titanium, but i'm guessing you will need to inlay metals like that much the same way one would inlay steel. search the archives, it's been kicked around a number of times before. basically, plan on little or no 'upset' or deformation of the metal being inlaid and shape the cavity accordingly. i've done it lots of times. have "fun". (bwahaha)

 

[Dani Girl]

https://www.facebook.com/danae.cresswell/media_set?set=a.232387620264262.1073741831.100004790765039&type=3

That's the link to the photos of what I did today.

This was slow going, lots of awkward and bad work, lots of learning. It's a cheap folding knife in thermoloc on a grooved piece of pine. Locked in my grs vise on my wobbly fan bearing turntable on my small drill press stand. For inlay (or any engraving for that matter) it would be wise to sturdy up everything so there's no movement or vibration, which I will soon. I wanted to do the inlay straight through the pivot pin to see how much harder it was and how much damage it would do to the folder. Making the pocket flat when half the metal was soft and half of the metal was hammerred down peened pin which is severly work hardened was a task. I needed my carbide round burs to cut into it and it took me a long long time to get it looking anything like smooth and flat. I hammered the Baptiste point all around the pocket to make toothy undercuts before I started doing lines of inlay

I first tired to undercut the 116 grooves using the metal removal method with a very small flat and found I couldn't get the inlay to stick really well. After asking for some words of wisdom today I tried inlaying one line at a time, and punching the undercuts using displacement instead... first with the Baptiste point,... which just bent because the knife steel is harder than my graver, then onto a flat, which bent too, then onto a harder flat, which snapped... slower if I use my handpiece and some control than my sloppy aggressive chasing hammer taps... but still snapped... and then i decided to just hoe into the sidewalls by turning the graver i cut the grooves with, my 116, 90 degrees and cutting teeth into the grooves and then turning 180 and cuting teeth into the sidewall of my groove on the other side. Hammer in lay in using a solid metal chisel, then using a 3/32 bur with the end ground off to a small round flat i put that in my handpiece and just gently tapped the side of the inlay back up and did the next line beside it. Leaving a small gap because the inlay goes about half into the groove and half above it mushrooming out over the groove holding it.

After repeating that half a dozen times I was half way accross the pocket and had enough of it for a day so tried to flatten it and see if it would stay in there while I detailed it. Some bits did flake out when I cut the lines of the design through it, and some of them cut all the way through because the pocket was so thin in spots where i put one inlay line too far from the other and had to file the whole knife and inlay down together until it got about flat.

Overall... it's possible, it's not easy... but possible. I'm so so welcome to any tips or being told what I'm doing wrong. (or doing right) Thanks, Danae.

 

[horologist]

Danae,

How about posting the photos to the forum instead of Facebook? That way it ties them to the thread for archival purposes. As it is, they aren't visible unless you have a Facebook account and I'm sure that I'm not the only one with zero desire to sign up with Facebook. Just a thought.

Troy

 

[Dani Girl]

Are the pictures permanently tied if I link them or upload them straight onto the site?

 

[Steve L S]

Danae,

How about posting the photos to the forum instead of Facebook? That way it ties them to the thread for archival purposes. As it is, they aren't visible unless you have a Facebook account and I'm sure that I'm not the only one with zero desire to sign up with Facebook. Just a thought.

Troy

Yes, Facebook is "against my religion" and I want to see here on the cafe
what Dani is up to
Steve

 

[Dani Girl]

Sorry for the delay folks. Here are the photos. These are the tools I found most effective being a 116 square, a flat, a a rotary bur touched briefly on the diamond lap to make a small flat, and a big solid punch with the tip narrowed to what seemed right.

You can see the groove that looks a bit like a zipper which i made turning the 116 into the groove and just pushing in a tooth and then another one next to it... etc.

I need to make a shallower groove or use larger wire to fill the space.

I'm keen for your imput/comments :biggrin:

 

[Dani Girl]

I tried some Niobium wire inlay. Side by side lines as SamW kindly advised me. I still need to practice the technique

The electricity does need to be applied straight to the inlay, both positive and negative.

 

[SamW]

Danae, it looks like you cut all the parallel lines to start with then undercut and inlayed the wire. The way this is normally done is cut one line, undercut and inlay a wire. On the first wire, use a flat punch to flatten the joining side vertically, so the next wire will have a smooth vertical wall to abut , then cut the next line, undercut and inlay and on across the area. This helps keep a reasonably uniform distance between the wires as they are inlayed and thus a fairly consistent thickness of the inlay.

 

[Dani Girl]

Thank you SamW. This was my first attempt and then I read what you said again and started doing it one line at a time. Much better... I just thought I would colour this large lump so I could convey why I am trying to stick Niobium into steel.

I'll try and do something not disasterous in the future. Maybe some dogtags or some of my other knives.

 

[peteb]

Danae: Concerning the relative conductivity of 2 metals, be it steel (which I assume you are inlaying with niobium) or what I use which is platinum bonded to niobium, a difficulty in the anodizing is getting color uniform all the way to the edges. I have found that a difference in overall thickness of the exposed niobium relative to the thickness of the material of about 20% is needed. So my experience is to make sure that I reduce the areas to be colored by 20%, in this case the material is .010 thick so the colored areas are .008 or thinner. For some reason the applied current seems to "like" the conductivity of the thinner section. I don't know if that helps in this case, I guess that you will have to try it to find out.