Intarsia - Angel Fish

This past week I finished this intarsia angel fish.

The pattern for this fish was in the September 2008 issue of Creative Woodworks and Crafts. It was designed by Bruce Worthington as a way to look at variations on cutting a pattern. The article shows how you can use a pattern to make segmentation, a domestic wood intarsia piece or an exotic wood intarsia piece.

The pattern is a good pattern to learn on with just a couple of tricky areas. The eye is probably the hardest cuts in this project. I find that when I cut tight circles like this that it is very difficult to keep the blade perfectly at 90 degrees, especially in a hard wood like the canary wood here. There for when I cut the darker wood inside the piece is also tapered to get a snug hit into the eye, and actually does not go all the way through the piece. I insert it into the eye hole until it is tight around the edges and then cut it off flush and sand it.

The other word of warning that I would make about this project is be very careful when you are sanding the back fin. The cuts into the fin make it very fragile and the pieces will break off easily if you are not careful.

Finally, I had one more lesson learned on this project. I tried gluing my pieces together using thick CA glue (super glue) with the thought that the thick stuff would allow enough working time to manipulate the pieces. Well I was wrong. I ended up with couple of gaps on this piece that were not there on final fitting because the glue dried to quickly for my assembly and I could not snug them up as tight as I had hoped.