Recon Stone

[Logan]

I am attempting my first inlay using recon stone. I ordered the colors I needed from Masecraft who seems to have the best prices and you get nice large pieces, but they are 1/8" thick. Does anyone have any tips on thinning this down? I'd like to thin the whole piece before cutting out my shapes to avoid any angling of the saw being exaggerated over that thickness and later having to sand that much material off a fretboard and headstock.

I have access to a drum sander, but haven't tried it yet, and the sales guy at Masecraft said they had tried a drum sander which had resulted in broken recon stone.

Any tips?

[tippie53]

I used it and what I did was set the top to within .010 of final size Did the rosette and it worked very well

[Logan]

So it didn't break from the heat at all, so breaks they had must have been from maybe trying to take too much material off too quickly or something? I'll glue down a small piece to a board and try the drum sander. Like I said, I kind of wanted to thin it before cutting to eliminate the effect of any blade wandering when I cut out pieces.

[tippie53]

It worked well . It sanded about like pearl . It polished up nicely .

[Logan]

Ran a couple of the full slabs I bought from Masecraft through the drum sander and it worked fine taking them down to .06" - I had some small cracks show up at the edge of one piece of turquoise, but those may have been inherent in the piece to start with, hard to say.

In any case, for the forum records, drum sander seems to work fine. I used 100 grit so it wouldn't gum up and gave it time to cool between passes rather than rapid-firing it through and through, and of course I was taking very little off at a time.

I had gone with Masecraft since they have a great selection, prices, etc. For 15-18 bucks you get a piece of recon stone that varies between 2 and 3 inches wide, and around 11 inches long. I'm enjoying working with it thus far.

[David L]

Could you share some pictures of it with us?

David L

[Logan]

Some pictures and brief descriptions of what you're looking at. Btw, I ended up not gluing them to any substrate which I've done in the past when making my own inlay blanks out of horn and such, and it worked fine just sending them through. They're long enough I could stabilize them on both the coming and going end of the drum sander with my hands.

Recon1.jpg

Recon2.jpg

recon3.jpg

[David L]

Good pictures, thanks!

David L

Is this stuff pretty much the same as faux turquoise sold by LMI?

tb

[Logan]

Yeah, pretty sure it is the same. You can get the turquoise with the black webbing, without, and quite a few other ways / shades. Recon stone is crushed up stone that is then built back with resin so you can cut it and sand it without (extra) fancy-pants tools.