Day 54: Painting, Gluing and Notching

Last night I was able to get the sixth and, I hope, final coat of paint onto the sharps. They look pretty darned good. I think a final swipe with the steel wool will wrap things up there quite nicely.

While waiting for the sharps to dry, I turned my attention back to the naturals. Because I had sized all of the heads, they were ready to be scored. As you can see in the photo below, I used a scoring jig from plans included in Mr. Miller's eBook Most Excellent. This jig allows me to lock each key top head in and use two metal bars to run a decorative score across them at 1/8" intervals.

The notching to the second score I mentioned a couple of posts ago is a pretty difficult task. The danger is that the X-Acto knife, a razor blade, really, pretty easily slips and cuts the notch all the way through the end of the key. Very frustrating and potentially dangerous. I made a judgment call last night and decided to glue up five of the top heads to their respective keysticks and give the notching a shot. It worked great because I'm able to get a better grip on the little buggers when they're attached to the keysticks.

I used a rub joint on these and they set up nicely. I was able to notch one with some success and am looking forward to working on all of them through this coming weekend.

Until next time...