Thread: 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 :





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



I choose the veneer materials.



I'm then using a jeweller saw



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



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