TIPS AND FREQUENTLY
ASKED QUESTIONS
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Fine shell blanks we produced in our own shop:
- Red Abalone Heart
- Red Abalone, Select
- Red Abalone, Figured
- Paua Abalone, Blue
- Paua Abalone, Select
- Paua Abalone, Pink Heart
- Paua Abalone, Blue Heart
- Red Abalone, Pastel
- White MOP, Figured
- White MOP, Color Flash
- Gold MOP, Premium Color
- Gold MOP, Sunburst
- Black MOP, Large Blank
- Trochas, (Turbo Shell)
- Pink MOP
- Bronze MOP
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One of the shell dealers we buy our raw shells from
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Understanding Shell
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| Oanh, She and her husband manage our shop in
Viet Nam. |
There are aspects of the
art of inlay and the understanding of shell
that are not obvious that you should know. I will try to explain
some
of these here. What is shell and how does it come to be.
Shells are made up of calcium carbonate. All shells, whether
they are
from an oyster, clam or snail are built up in layers as the
animal grows. |
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Red Abalone
Shell Cut Open. |
After a blank is ground out of a shell it will have one side
that is
better looking than the other. The reason for this is because
you are
looking at light reflected off the surface of the shell blank.
The side
of the blank that was the outside of the shell will scatter
the
reflected light and seem to be brighter. The other side of the
blank
will gather the light and consoladate it making it appear darker
and
less reflective.
Whereever possible you will want to use the outer side of the
shell
blank to show of the color best. |
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This is the first grind that is done on a stone wheel with
water
running over the stone as it spins.
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| Things you should be aware of
It's come to my attention that several dealers out there
are selling
Paua and other shell products that are not real solid shell
blanks or
good quality shell blanks.They are using deception to make
the buyer
think they are going to get the best quality shell blanks.
First let me explain a little about Paua Abalone so you will
be able to
follow what I am telling you.
Paua is the most beautiful abalone shell there is. It has
the strongest
color of any shell anywhere. That's the good news. Bad news
is that
most of the shells are small and thin with a lot of worm damage.
Of all the shell's harvested, only about 5% of the shells
that are
thick enough to give nacre that is acceptible for making solid
blanks.
These are the older abalones that have been missed during
earlier
fishing. Just like people, Abalone grow fast and slim until
they are
adult size... Then just like us, they start getting thicker.
As an example, we bought a container load (8.5 metric tons)
of the
shells from New Zealand. Out of all this only 400 kilos were
"J" grade
("J" is for Jewerly), thick shells.
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White MOP Shells. |
| The rest had to be sold in Asia where they
use much thinner blanks than we do in the west. They also do
not mind the blanks with worm holes and outer bark on the back
side because they inlay flush with the surface. |
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Gold Lip MOP Shells. From these we get both Gold MOP and
White MOP
Blanks.
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Because the blanks must be cut and ground from
curved shells, most of the material gets ground away to produce
the select quality blanks. For us the result was that only 400
kilos (880 lbs) of raw shell were "J" grade, resulting
in about 30 kilos (66 lbs)of best quality shell blanks. The
rest is all ground away and lost in the processing.
One operator is cutting his blanks from lower grade shells and
leaving a valley in the surface. He is then filling the valley
with epoxy and passing that off as "an old inlay secret".
All I can say about that is "BS".
Epoxy will not buff out the same as shell, so the end result
will be very poor no matter what you do.
Simple fact is that you can not get good select grade blanks
from thin shells. End of discussion. |
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Black MOP Shells. From these we get both Black MOP and
White MOP
Blanks.
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| Abalam:
Abalam is a product that was developed by Chuck Erikson (The
Duke of Pearl) and his friend Larry Siffel. I have known Chuck
and been a customer of his for thirty years. For ages he was
the only one selling good quality shell products at great
prices. I know of nobody who has ever felt that Chuck has
been anything but a great fellow who is as honest as the day
is long.
He has been the main supply of shell products for luthiers
(Directly and indirectly) for many years.
Please do not think that my view of abalam has anything to
do with my great respect for Chuck.
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Abalone Shells before processing. |
| Abalam is made from the thinner grades of shells
that are of no use for shell blanks. Even these thinner shells
have great color and finding a way to use these for inlay work
is a great thing.
Abalam has some great value for some kinds of inlay work.
I find it to be wonderful for doing the purfling strips around
the edge of the guitar and in the 1/16" wide rosette
strips. This is because it breaks into the channel so well
and looks very good when finished under lacquer.
I prefer using abalam there to using solid shell strips. It
is much
faster, and to my eye, I find it better looking. Some luthiers
do not agree on this. |
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Penguin Shell used to get our Bronze MOP Blanks and also
some nice
white MOP blanks.
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Abalam is made by cutting the shells up using
band saws with thin daimond blades.
The shells are cut along the curve of the shell so that the
result is long thin Strips.
Shell that is thin can be flattened a little without breaking.
Those strips are then sanded to a thickness of about .010"
to .015".
Next they are edge glued to each other to make up sheets a little
over 5.5" X9".
The sheets are then sanded smooth to a thickness of about .005"
to .010".
Next step is to layer these with epoxy glue to the desired thickness,
be it .030", .040", .050" etc. At last, the large
"Blank" is trimmed to it's standard size of 5.5"
X 9".
Some of these are then cut up into straight strips for purfling
and curved strips for rosettes. Others are sold as full size
sheets for inlay artists.
There is a great article in Guitar Maker #38 with much more
detail on all of this. |
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Trochas Shells, also known as white turbo.
From these we get very nice White blanks with a strong bleu-green
and
pink color flash and wonderful rolling effect in the light.
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Now let me tell you what
I do not like about abalam. While it is good when you need
to cut an inlay that is larger than any blank. I would rather
pick out matching shell blanks and joint them because that
allows me to choose where the joints will be.
I used abalam once in a fret board, very bad idea. After I
sanded the radius into the fret board, I'd sanded down through
some layers of shells that did not match well at all. The
next problem was that because of the way that the abalam layers
are glued up, there were pockets of solid epoxy, yuck....
This epoxy will not buff out to the same high shine that the
shell will. Result was a very uneven look that was not good.
I will never try this again. On that same guitar I made a
3/4" wide single peice abalam rosette. It was also not
as good looking because after sanding, some of the shell
layers were so thin that I could see the next layer of shell
through the top layer. It just looked weired.
There were also air pockets in the epoxy that needed to be
filled. In the end I felt the guitar was not as good as it
would have been if I'd used solid shell.
In todays age of computer cutting of inlays and the pockets
that they go into, abalam makes for a great product. The operator
can set all his programs to cut the maximum number of inlays
from a sheet of abalam. But when he tells you these are selected
matching sections, well I doubt it.
I have seen a site on the web where people selling abalam
products are
calling it solid shell. It is no more solid shell than plywood
is solid wood.
The old saying holds, if it seems too good to be true......
You know the rest. |
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Red Sea Snail. This is a very popular shell in asia for
its wonderful
peach color and strong rose pink color flash.
We no longer process these because the cost has gone so
high.
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| Shell Blank Thickness Information We sell
our shell blanks in several thicknesses, fron .020" (.5
MM) to
.080" ( 2 MM).... What does this mean? We grind most
of our shell
blanks in our own shop. Other shell blank products are bought
from
other processors. The quality control is better on the ones
we process.
This is how we process our blanks;
The shells are cut into sections with very this saw blades
under water.
Next they are rough ground (On a wet stone wheel) to get one
surface
very flat and then the other side is ground to a little thicker
than
the finished thickness.The last step is when we pass these
blanks
through a special machine that was built for us. This machine
has a
daimond cutting wheel. Blanks are fed into the machine on
a hard rubber
feed belt. Results are quite good and we are able to get the
blanks
very flat and close to thickness. Generally, within 0.004
inches of
target. If a blank is labeled as 0.060 inches it will not
be under
thickness, but a may be a bit over.
End result is that the blanks are quite good but not all
exactly the
same thickness. Softer shells, Such as abalone come out closer
than mop
which is harder.
Because of the above, most of the blanks you buy from us will
be right
on or very close to the advertised thickness.
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| Sorting blanks for quality and size. |
Gold lip shells are gold on the outside and
white on the inside. From
these we get Gold MOP, Gold Sunburst MOP and
White MOP. The White MOP from this shell is a warmer white with
very
strong color flash. From some very large shells we are able
to get
guitar and mandolin nuts.
White lip shells are white inside and out. The blanks from
these shells
are very white with less color flash. The shells are also
often larger
and provide the best number of blanks from each shell. From
some very
large shells we are able to get guitar and mandolin nuts.
Black lip shells are smaller and this is where we get Black
MOP, Black
Sunburst MOP and White MOP.
The "black" is not always black, some is brownish
or grayish. Most has
very nice color flash.
The white blanks we get from this shell tend to be very silvery
white. |
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Cut away view of Gold MOP
shell. |
The ratio of gold or black blanks to sunburst
and white blanks varies
from shell to shell. Because the color layer (Be it Black or
Gold) tends to be thin. And beacuse of this, most black or gold
blanks will have color on one side and be white or mixed on
the other side.Blanks that have the black or gold color through
out the thickness of the blank will be sold as "Select
Blanks" at a preimum price because there are far less of
them.
You will need to inlay the regular blanks very close to
the surface to
avoid sanding away the color layer. This is fine for flat
inlays. For
fret boards that will be radiused after the inlay is in place,
you should pay a little more and get select (color-through)
shell blanks.
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