Inlaid wooden No Face face

[AKA Pablo]

Very little of what I build has anything to do with pop culture so I mostly just lurk and learn, but I finished this piece for a friend recently and was surprised that it wasn't a dismal failure, so... Sharing!

Every No Face mask I've ever seen was done in nigh flawless plastic of some sort, but plastic just seems like the wrong material for anything Miyazaki inspired, so I wanted mine to be solid wood.

Size was about 13" x 8". Materials were tupelo, ebony and pink ivory. Finish was white shellac primer and 2P10 thin cyanoacrylate. Inlay goes clear through to the inside face of the mask (about 3/4" thick), which is something I'll probably never do again

 

[Howlrunner]

Awesome sauce!

 

[Daegurth]

Spot on- traditional Japanese masks are painted and lacquered wood, so this makes a lot of sense. Weird that I'd never even thought of this before, and now onto the build list it goes!

Really nicely done, though. The finished product looks like a historical piece in its own right. I see some slight gapping on the final progress pic, did you finish that up with sawdust filler, or did it close up some on its own? Harder to see in the final image.

 

[AKA Pablo]

I see some slight gapping on the final progress pic, did you finish that up with sawdust filler, or did it close up some on its own? Harder to see in the final image.

There were absolutely some hairline gaps that got filled in with dust as the sheer depth of the plunge amplified every minor flexation in the acrylic template during routing, but they had all been taken care of by the final progress pic. I think the dark lines you're noticing are actually just areas where the glue wicked up into the fibers of the tupelo, darkening it considerably. It's a ridiculously soft, spongy wood you can literally carve with your fingernails if you really want to--terrible from a durability standpoint, but its willingness to absorb also made it ideal for CA glue finishing--it just drinks the stuff up, leaving it nearly as hard as maple.

I'd have been terribly upset with those lines if I were going for a brand spanking new look, but since I wanted it to be weathered and artifact-like, I honestly wish I could have made them worse

 

[jarvis]

Fantastic work!

 

[cjchiu]

Beautiful

 

[JPH]

Pink ivory! Wow! For the people who get it, double wow!!

 

[Sinned]

This is gorgeous. Really cool idea to do it with inlaid wood; definitely haven't seen one done this way. Love it!

Off topic, but in that first picture, what kind of hose is that you have attached to your Festool sander?

 

[AKA Pablo]

Off topic, but in that first picture, what kind of hose is that you have attached to your Festool sander?

Totally normal 27mm hose with some of this braided nylon stuff over it to help keep it from snagging on edges:

http://www.festoolproducts.com/acce...4-gorilla-sleeve-for-27mm-hoses-1-length.html

I have mixed feelings about the product, so don't take this as an endorsement. It's functional, but it's also difficult to melt the ends well enough to keep it from fraying (painful when your hand slides over it!) and it's reeeeeeally hard to get it to stay where you want it to stay on the hose. Cheap though!

 

[PoopaPapaPalps]

Genuinely gorgeous work! This is the kind of thought I appreciate going into any work. Great job!