Header image with 5 fiddles

Purfling Glued

This week I glued the inlaid purfling in place. Rather than removing the purfling, applying glue, and then very quickly trying to get the placement perfect, I took a short-cut. I made up the glue quite thin and hot, and applied it to the edges of the purfling with an eye dropper.

It appeared to work quite well. After waiting a couple of hours, I started trimming the exposed excess with a small chisel. Everything went fine until I got to one of the "C" bouts. The purfling broke and pulled out of the groove for several centimetres.

I reheated the glue and applied a few drops in the exposed groove. I tried to push the purfling down to exactly match the embedded part. It's close, but a very slight offset is visible. I'm hoping that I can disguise it with a bit of judicous scraping and sanding.

At the end of the day, I had finished trimming the exposed excess purfling. Next I well scrape the perimeters to achieve a nice smooth valley.