A while back I was lucky enough to acquire a complete set of piano keys salvaged from...well, an old piano. It was the ivory that drew me, a wonderful inlay material with many uses; escutcheon plates, Scrimshaw plaques, stringing etc. however the particular use I had in mind is the wear strip on marking gauges, It's hardwearing, virtually frictionless and beautiful to boot (watch this space).
As you can see each key is veneered in two parts to reduce wastage at the factory. When you see the grain you can't help being reminded this is a natural product and where it came from. Although It's still illegal to reuse pre-ban Elephant ivory in commercial objects I don't have a problem with personal use from this scource - the damage has already been done (regrettably), it would be a shame not to give it a new lease of life.
The black keys are made from ebony, almost certainly African (Diospyros crassiflora) though its hard to be 100% without a microscope, either way, It's old growth, fine, hard and very, very dry to the point where it has a glass like tap tone! Whilst pondering how best to use these keys I glanced down at my wrist to a bracelet made of black glass beads, a gift from my other half...aha! to the lathe she goes.
The fine even grain made turning the beads a pleasure, a 1/2" skew chisel did pretty much all of the work with a technique called 'rolling' to shape each half of the sphere, evened out with a quick sand of 400 grit, followed by 0000 wire wool twisted into a cord then finally burnished with some shavings. The holes through the middle were bored by chucking the blank and loading the tailstock with a 2.5mm bit, took me three split beads to realise you have to bore slow. Real slow!
Each bead was made a slightly different shape to add a bit of flavour and the centre four stamped with a single number to make up '1830', later filled with silver pigment. Now all that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense without an explanation, provided by the single key thrown in for the before - after comparison. Hope she likes them!
A gift repaid, a smile to be made!
No comments:
Post a Comment