Thread: The French Love of A Mouton Rouge (by moutonrouge)

wow really nice work there

Painfully slow progression. because the surface is iridescent, it is very hard to see what I'm doing, the mistakes are mounting and so does the additional work trying to correct these. I gave up the idea of drawing the design (as there is no way it can be discern on this type of surface) so everything is pretty much done free-hand. A bit hard to explain but while the bone is opaque and the fresh water MOP has an even structure so i can draw and see what I'm carving, this MOP reflects the light at every single layer down to the its last molecule. Besides, the overall black shade doesn't make it any easier. It feels like driving at night with a full beam oncoming traffic...literally I'm trying to see the road.
But it started to get shape.



Most likely it will be the one and only project of carved black MOP.
I expect to meet the same problem with the other scales but the overall white-silver-ish shade should make the work easier

For the drawing portion or layout, have you tried mechanical pencils with different colours of leads. I know from my time doing tile work that black is not the best colour except on very light colours. Silver seemed best followed by blue or red.

A good idea, it didn't cross my mind.

nearly there, some finishing touches to try correcting further , a polish and the scale will be ready to "dress" the blade

I corrected as much as I could/knew, polished and buffed. Not too bad in the end

much easier work now, practically finished one side and started the work on the other





After trying all these sorts of MOP, I can say that personally I very much prefer the freshwater MOP over the other types (porcelain-like appearance). In other words, after I finish this I'll make another using freshwater MOP, same design to have the full 7/8 fitting set / trio (the first scales are much smaller in size, to fit a 5/8).

This is fabulous work. Definitely a man after my own heart with all of the pearl and silver. I will be referring to this in future attempts at my own full pearl scales. Do you find you always have to metal back them? Would you ever try just a full pearl piece scale?

Originally Posted by Wightman

(...) Do you find you always have to metal back them? Would you ever try just a full pearl piece scale?

Thank you, glad you like the idea.
Some backing is essential as the panels are to be pinned onto, I prefer silver-nickel metal backing as this is similar in appearance with silver. I believe others use G10 for backing, if I'm not mistaken.
I would gladly try a full MOP scale but, so far, I found no means to source this. the scale's overall length is 15 cm and longest blank I could possibly found was 9 cm. From a car boot sale I got a damaged MOP fan (victorian style) from which I got the end panels. They appear to be like a single piece of MOP but in fact it turn out be made of 3 pieces of feather shaped parts, glued onto each other and sanded to appear like a single piece. In other words, it appears that even in 19th century it was problematic to find long enough panels/slabs but artisans had the means / knowledge to work things around. I do believe the 18th century MOP scales are most likely to be made of a single piece of MOP (and there are wonderful examples in various collections), but it appears that in the 19th century the artisans had already started to rely on metal backing to assemble the MOP panels - I presume it'd been getting difficult to source large slabs or it was the intention to keep the costs down. So, I think, in the present days of industrial farming, I doubt there is a chance to find a shell large enough to source a nearly 7" long piece of MOP.
As a compromise, what I intend to do in the future is to apply the same technique of gluing feather shaped slabs of MOP together and sand them to get a "single" piece. I'm still studying how to do it.

Yea, I see your issue now. I can only see pieces roughly 10cm long. I see the issue. You can get huge sheets of laminated pearl. But doubt it would work quite the same. They do take custom orders as well. But would still be tough to say if they could get a full length that long. I do believe you would need a shell, that much larger to cut it out of. Let alone what the price may be. None the less, may always be worth inquiring about. Sent you the link through PM.