It’s been a little while because I haven’t been doing much new and exciting but…
Dad’s eyes are getting worse and he has trouble differentiating the black and blue on our favorite family game. So… 106 tiles, two boxes, and 5 racks later…
Curly Maple: Box and Tiles
Walnut: Racks
Cherry: Tile box
Tile inlay: Turquoise, Malachite, Black Tourmaline, Mica
So. Much. Sanding.
(All designed myself, all cut and engraved with my GF!)
Looks lovely! Especially nice job on the racks and box.
Wow, that’s beautiful!
Nice work. What binder did you use in the inlays?
I’ve found for stone that cyanoacrylate is by far the easiest and most durable… though also the most annoying to sand (resin is so much easier to sand)
Looks great
Lovely job!
We used to play this when we visited my parents. Then played with our kids at home. Ran across the game just before Christmas and stashed it close at hand.
That is beautiful.
Great job on the inlay!
Awesome. I did something similar for my Dad a few years ago. He and his girlfriend tell me they still play it all the time.
In my view the mineral inlays make it. The whole work is great though.
I did a lot of cutting Turquoise, malachite, and opal. Malachite is beautiful stuff, but you need to cut it with a wet grinder. Even so, I could taste the sulfur in it. Same taste with Lapis, like someone struck a match.
Yep, I’ve got a thing for minerals, and that’s why the use of them in inlay strikes me so. Thanks for sharing that!
Great game and great work! Wonderful gift!
Mica sounds like a great material for laser cutting. Western North Carolina used to mine it for the very large sheets when it was used heavily for electrical stuff and can still be gathered in the area. Lapis and Malachite might even kill the laser before the person, and opal (especially American and Mexican sourced) can break for little or no reason, much less loss of fire. I carved a small horse that had to live in water to keep from breaking.
Oh yeah I forgot, my joker/wild cards are triskeles with lapis!
I wear a mask when I work with the stones because I don’t really want stabby dust in my lungs, especially with things like malachite that has copper in it too!
That’s great! And I love the swap to black tiles, makes the numbers stand out better!
Mostly for stone, unless it’s a large inlay, or a very soft stone, I use powdered stone and then use cyanoacrylate as a binder. If you do it right the CA really only binds and you can’t see it at all
And you don’t have to try to burn/vaporize malachite.
I found many colors of soapstone that worked great with inlays. I think pipestone is the same breed but iron red, all relatively strong and you can shape it with files.
I’ll have to look up pipestone! Red is one I want to use more often but red jasper is a pain in the ARSE as it’s a Moh’s 7 so I have to use diamond bits to even sand the darned stuff!
I have worked pipestone. I found it fragile (for a pipe).
