Following on from my success with the inlaid poppies, I decided to make my wife another vase for her to put her clay flowers in. This time I would make a vase using the same woods; pine and mahogany for the vase and 6mm birch plywood for the inlay.
I had a bit of trouble with the scroll saw work on this one, and to be honest, I still can't get my head around what went wrong. Let me explain. To do an inlay, I tape two pieces of wood together and then cut out the design, once done, the inlay piece fits neatly into the hole on the other piece of wood. That's the theory, but in reality it isn't that simple because the blade of the saw removes some wood and therefore, if you just do a straight cut, the inlay fits like a sausage in shirt sleeve.
To get around the issue, the cut is made at a angle that is appropriate to the thickness of the wood and you then get a nice snug fit. Having said all that, I'm having great difficulty in understanding which bit fits into which bit and on my first attempt at doing the tulips I got it wrong. The plywood inlay fell straight through the mahogany without touching the sides, so I had to glue the original pieces back in. I did that and after using a bit of pyrography to disguise the problem it didn't look too bad.
My wife liked the finished vase, but there was a problem. She decided that wooden vases bring attention to the fact that her clay flowers aren't actually real, so she doesn't want anymore. In fact, she stuck the Icelandic poppies she'd just finished into a jug from a charity shop.
Ha well, at least I can get on with some of my own stuff now. I'm thinking of having a go at a bit of Automata, I'll let you know if it comes to anything in my next post.
By the way, if you would like to see some more of my wife's flowers here is a Link. She would be pleased with any comments about her work.
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