Abalone / Mother of Pearl Inlay

Beyond the Manual
1

My wife wanted to make a wooden pendant with mother of pearl inlay. It took some experimenting to get the settings, but I figured I’d share them with you all in case you wanted to do the same :slight_smile:

Here’s the pendant:

Bee%20Pendant
Bee%20Pendant612×816 154 KB

The wood is proofgrade maple ply with silver paint. The mother of pearl we got off amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074YJ1Z2M/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 .

We used a cut of 200 speed at 40 power. The thickness was .018".

The pearl has a light protective coating on top and comes with a black double-sided tape backing. These settings didn’t cut through the back side of the plastic attached to the tape, but we had no trouble removing the pieces regardless. We added a dab of glue to the engraved portions of the wood before laying the MOP in. Later we plan to coat it with a little epoxy. Overall, we’re very pleased with how it turned out.

Happy trails!

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Wow…lovely! thank you .

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Beautiful!! Thanks for the settings too.

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Thanks for the settings! This came out great.

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A very important piece of knowledge you’ve just given me for free.
Thank you very much.
John

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Very nice! I’m thinking @rpegg did some of that on a banjo back in pre-release days but I don’t remember seeing a photo.

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Couldn’t get my material to cut cleanly. It was thicker and the pre-release units didn’t have good power control at that time.

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A beautiful piece! Thank you for sharing your settings!

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Nice work, I always admire inlay work. Beautiful.

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Very cool, I have several shells just waiting to be used from my old jewelry days, and you have helped save the loss due to experimenting.

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Gorgeous! I’m assuming a bee…

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Indeed. We’re making a “Mother’s Necklace” with a pendant for each of our kiddos. We’ve got four girls and a boy, so it’s going to have 4 flowers and 1 bee :wink:

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Perhaps a Honeycomb to hold all the pendants!

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Very nice! Thanks for the settings!

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I don’t see a banana for scale… what size is this? (Came out beautifully btw !!!)

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Looks like a wonderful gift.

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Wow that looks awesome! Thank you for the link and the settings. Saw this the other night and immediately went to amazon, My order should be here tomorrow! :slight_smile: Thanks again!!

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18

I would suggest going to Alibaba for it. $1-$8 a sheet vs $33 on amazon.

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Thank you! I wouldn’t have thought to look there. What a great savings!

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