I got the first two test pieces glued. All in all I'm happy with the results. One of the pieces got a tiny little air bubble. I figure that happened because I was too stingy with the glue.



To add depth and kick up the color on any shell, it's best to paint the back with black. I did this using Testor's flat black. The paint wasn't quite dry when I took this pic.

There was a little bleed-through of the paint under the seam of the shell that had the air bubble, which is another indication of glue starvation.

A good trick to prevent bleeding is to use the base color, clear, in this case, over the joint before painting the backing color. I'll use that on the next test.

Here's what it looks like after the clear and black backing coat. The joint ends up being much cleaner.

Yes, the backing color will affect the final look of the shell. Most of the time, black is used to increase the depth of the shell.

The rosette pieces have been finalized and are being glued into place.

We'll see tomorrow what it looks like.

I'll let the epoxy finish curing overnight, then tomorrow I'll seal the joints with clear and apply the black.

While that's drying I might as well install all the hardware. :D

Yes, this caul works really well for both cutting/fitting the shell pieces and later for gluing them to the rosette casing. As you probably recall one of the problems we had cutting out the shell pieces was not disturbing the relationship between the shells we'd cut before.

Being able to clamp each piece as you go makes the joints more precise. When it came time to glue, it was really nice to be able to manuever the new piece into place and not have to worrry about disturbing the previous pieces.

I'm really glad I spent the time and effort to make this tool. I can't imagine how I'd have done this without it.