Post #401646 by Louiethefish on Sat, Aug 16, 2008 10:59 AM

Aloha Ya'll!

Someone asked about carving in pearl shell. First off you'll need a decent flex shaft outfit, like a Foredom, as that stuff will wear out tools. Getting large thick pearl shells is also difficult. You want ones 5-6 inches across or bigger if you want to carve fat fish, etc, and even then you only get really thick material near the hinge. after drawing my design on a sanded surface of shell, I use a Hacksaw with those round wire blades that cut in any direction to roughly cut out the shape, allowing outside room to carve down later. I also use my cheap table band saw, with 3/8 wide blades, which wear out fast on shell. I save those blades just for shell, as they will burn bone after shell cutting. I then use my double ended grinder with a 80 grit hard sanding disc to rough out more of the shape, then move over to the Foredom, and use a large cylinder (3/16 diameter) Tungsten carbide burr, to do almost all the shaping, also using other burrs for detailing. On hooks I use the small stone cones for inside curves. You can also use the Dremel burr # 115, and other Dremel burrs like # 117, but they wear out sooner. Whatever I am doing with shell, I have a fan to my left and wear a dust mask.
After shaping as much as possible with burrs, I sand and shape further with Adalox Coarse Snap-on discs in the handpiece, or I make my own sanding discs by hot gluing a 1 inch square of 320 wetdry paper to the head of a nail, then put it in the handpice, spin it, and use a razor knife to cut it into a disc. This makes a very supple small disc that is great for very fine sanding, but wears out very fast. Make lots!
Finally I use knife edge cutter to draw lines on fines etc, hnad sand it with 320 or finer, inlay the eyes, and polish on the left hand side of my grinder with white rouge.
I hope that helps.......Happy carving, Louie