Inlaid Stone

[f250]

I have made intasia in the past and normally used a dowel for the eyes. I got several suggestions to use paint or other things.

What I'm thinking now on the eagle I am making is to use Jet Black Powder. They stock it at this place: http://www.treelineusa.com/cgi-bin/shopper


I have my eye on a butter fly for my girls next and have considered accenting it with crushed turquoise or pink coral or malachite (all can be found on that same web page listed above).

What do you all think?

[Forester21]

How do you use it?
Theresa

[thecopperfish]

You might also think about using taxidermy eyes. I use them on my intarsia fish and they look great. Here is a link to some bird eyes. They come in many sizes and colors.
http://vandykestaxidermy.resultspage...25&submit.y=11
Chris

[workin for wood]

no problem...30 min two part epoxy, cost you a couple dollars at walmart or wherever. Just mix in your crushed stone, dye's, paint, whatever you want into the epoxy. Drill the hole for the eye. Put tape on the bottom to cover the hole so liquid doesn't flow right through the hole. Pour mix into hole, use old scroll blade or whatever if the hole is small and difficult to get into. Place item on scroll saw. Tape onto table of saw and now turn on the saw. The vibrations will help the epoxy sink and help remove air bubbles. When dry, sand your eye to shape.

warning...dyes, crushed stones...they will basically dry in the time the epoxy says it will. Paint will slow down the dry time big time. Could take a couple days to fully dry using paint to color the epoxy, but in the end, it will dry. Some dye's will change color when you add them into the epoxy, so test first...for example, a blue transfast dye looks like ugly mud in epoxy, but is blue in water. Now...you mix that transfast blue into water and then add to the epoxy and it stays blue, go figure, but takes a couple days to dry. All depends on the types of dye's you use. For a powdered stone, the epoxy should have no effect on the colors, but still do a test first.

[lucky788scroller]

The link isnt working for me, but I am assuming this is stuff much like the 'inlace' powders used with an epoxy? Thats my plans for a couple huge cypress slices I have here that cracked while drying (air dried 15 years).Dale

[MacS]

The dyes are concentrated, and must be let down in the proper solvent to see the "stain colors."

Concentrated dyes and the pigmented paste colorants are so concentrated most look black. It takes the solvent to start to see the color appear, this is how concentrates become different stain colors, by letting down the concentrate by adding more solvent.

You can add more color stains to your inventory by reducing the color strenght with the right solvent.

[Forester21]

Thanks for the explanation Mac. The epoxy dries clear then?
Theresa

[MacS]

Theresa,

Yes, by thinning out the stain's color as shown in the diagram, and then adding it into the epoxy, you can make the color of the epoxy, transparent, translucent, or opaque.

First, you add the color into the resin, and then throughly mix it up, and then add in the catalyst, and then mix that up throughly, now your ready to go to work.