Thread: Bismark with "Garibaldi" scales

Outstanding with that work. Thanks for sharing.

My pleasure guys, and thanks. It seemed to make more sense than slapping on a set of Micarta or something. I love the old stuff and try to keep it where possible. It's very cool somehow.

Can I ask, how did you route out the shape?

I used a tiny ( think dental bit) ball end cutter. Once the main area was relieved I then switched to a square end cutter in a typical router style application. Couldn't breathe while doing this as one little slip and all would be lost. That plastic against a high speed cutter disappears rather quickly!
A bit of a balancing act as too slow the bit wants to grab and walk.. too high and you just make a melted blob on the bit. Diamond cutters just wrapped themselves in melted plastic. Open style cutters at around 20,000 rpm seemed to work best.

Reay nice,
and thanks for the tid bit on the speed with the cutting bit. That will help narrow the learning curve on a few projects I have in mind.

Obviously try it on some old shot scales first to get a feel for it before you sacrifice some nice ones. The bits are commercially available but ask your Dentist to save used bits for you. The shanks are usually very short but they're still sharp enough for this stuff but not for teeth and they're free.