Post #314453 by Tamapoutini on Sat, Jun 23, 2007 2:54 AM

Gidday mate; sorry Ive taken so long to get back to you.

I really like your sea-dragon design. A good adventurous project to start with (Ive always been an advocate of jumping in over your head; its the best way to learn - total immersion :wink: ) and it looks at though you are off to a great start.

Pdrake is onto it: larger burrs should help to iron out some of those ripples although you should try to get as even a surface as possible (in the areas it can reach) with your grinding wheel - the largest burr of all.
If your handpiece will allow it, run at a very slow speed (5-10,000rpm - experiment), DRY!! Yes thats right, dry! Srcubbing around at slower speeds wont overheat your burrs and allows you to see whats happening to a greater degree. Those wee ripples can be dealt with one by one and the whole form slowly smoothed and details crispened. Make sure you wear a dust mask! Wipe or wash the dust away from time to time and you will still be able to see where you've been. Sometimes it is necessary to go over the whole carving several times in this manner.

The pounamu you have appears (in the cleaner right side) to be an inanga or kokopu. Id avoid trying to work the black areas as they are probably patches of iron and soft horrible buggers to work! At least half of it looks ok though; slab 'er up..?

The 'tangiwai' at the end seems kind of blue in colour - possibly aotea..?? A bit hard to tell from the pic. Do you know where it was found?

Hope this helps. You're doing just fine for a newbie; keep it up!

Tama :)