Multi-material scales on liners

Hi there !

I usually post my works on the "What are you working on ?" thread, but here is a little "Howtodo?" thread about making scales with liners and various flat materials.

Brass and silver liners were used in the past for making scales.

Nowadays, other materials may also be used, with various characteristics of weight, resistance...

So far I've worked with :

• aluminium (lightest but quite sensible to shocks and distortions),
• copper (more resistant, but I wonder about oxydation in the long term),
• niobium (no problem of oxydation here, a little more expensive)
• and titane (light and resistant, perhaps a little hard to work with).

As veneer, I priefer to use materials as tortoise, mother of pearl or ivory. Each one can be found in adequate dimensions and thickness without too much difficulty.

Ivory on right dimensions can be found by recycling vintage piano clavier. Tortoise by buying vintage (broken if possible) fans, and mother of pearl by buying vintage casino tokens.

First I'm collecting old originals scales, as a "catalog" of shapes and size.

When I'm finding a blade I think deserves a rescaling, I look among my vintage models if there is a match :

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Then I report it on the liner-to-be with a cd-marker

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I choose the veneer materials.

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I'm then using a jeweller saw

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File the edges and divide the liner in three sections with the cd-marker

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Report it on the veneer, that goes through the sawing process

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Adjustement is done with double-face tape, semi-rough file and sandpaper taped on another file (for the finitions)

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Then the pining is done with semi-hard silver wire

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Et voilà !

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You may find silver wire, silver and niobium sheets on metalclay4u website, aluminium, copper and titane sheet on ebay.

If you have materials too thin to use by itself as scales material, you may also use this technic. (Hereafter, tortoise on niobium)

Attachment 299557

I hope this thread will be useful for you :chapeau

(I decline all responsability if your wife / kids / grandsons / dog complain about you passing more time in your workshop)

Beautiful work and great tutorial.

I’ve never tried washerless pinning, but will need to on my grandad’s ivory Kropp one day.

Well-Done, Thaeris! Lovely scales as well! :tu

This is a long needed and highly appreciated post.
I have drooled over the posted photos of your works for years!
Thank you for the post!
~Richard

Pleasure is mine Richard !

It's always much encouraging to get nice comments from SRP's community, and I always enjoy to share my work here :)

:chapeau thank you.
Is all the work done without machines?

Just the drilling part and paste-polishing with dremel, once I’m done with the sand-paper :)

Thank you for your posts.

How is Tortoise to drill? Anything special needed to know.

Maybe one day I might need to know this....:D

Tortoise is just like horn, except it's a little finer (no fibers). It's a really smooth material, that takes a wonderful polish.

You just have to be careful not to burn it, by polishing it too fast with your dremel for exemple.

And it's better to keep it away from long exposition to direct sunlight, it may dry.

Awesome! Thank you for the tutorial. You make it look so easy.
Never worked with mother of pearl, seems so brittle, was always intimidated to try it.
Horn is fairly easy so I figure tortoise would be about the same, but tortoise is such a valuable material, thats also a little nervous one to try.
I love ivory and it's fairly forgiving but always a little nervous pinning it.
Thank you for the suggestion on how to get tortoise, there was an antique store that had dozens to choose from in Indiana a number of years back, but crazy expensive. The search is on for broken hand fans! Maybe some ivory ones too with ornate carved designs?.. With a backer could be cool?
Also, that is the only other Gebr Dittmar In Heilbronn that I've seen... Brass covered tang.. Very cool design!
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A set of scales is usually around two days of work in the workshop.

But it depends of the materials used, the experience using the tools, your patience, your focus (I often start one thing, then put my eyes on something else..)

MOP isn't the material I priefer to work with. It mineral and "very crispy" to saw and file, and when a power-tool is used, it produces a very fine powder, toxic for the lungs.

Fan hunt needs patience if you want to find some at reasonable price, but it happens from time to time to get one in tortoise below 70$.

However I don't think you can find fan any more expensive than carved ivory ones ! It's about five / ten times more expensive than the tortoise's ones.

Here again, you may want to look to broken ones. ;-) There is nice designs of bone fan too.

I'm a little jealous of the state of conservation of this Dittmar ! I love their look.. :-)

Bone fans! Nice.
So I did some looking, there are very intricate designs, though they are all straight scale designs. But still could be very cool.
I like the idea of repurposed materials.
Looking forward to seeing more of your work! And tutorials.
:beer1:

Hey I have a few questions if you will..
1. Does the thickness of the liner depend on the material that you are using? What thicknesses do you use?
2. When the scales are put together, and the slight bend of the scales... Does this create a noticeable gap between the outer plates? Is it good to have less of a wedge angle to minimize the scale flex?
3. Did you epoxy the plates on before pinning?

Please forgive any questions already answered in thread, I skimmed it over and may have missed it..
Thanks for the info!