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Hey guys, I've been lurking here for a while. I need some advice concerning color variation in a rosette inlay.
I purchased some Abalone shell pieces for an inlay from Stewmac. The routing, inlay, gluing all went perfect.
after all was dry, I sanded to level the inlay, & noticed that some of the segments had lost their color, although
some of them were still very colorful. I contacted Stewmac tech support & was assured that the shell was solid
& should be fine with some light sanding with a finer grade of sandpaper. So far, Not Happening

Thanks, Don

what's it look like when you wet it with naptha, mineral spirits, H2O?

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Sanding the shell to level will often expose layers of different color, sometimes not as desirable. Setting the inlays in as close to flush as possible helps to avoid this. One technique is to tack a toothpick onto the inlay with a drop of CA so that the toothpick spans the inlay cavity and holds the inlay flush. Flush is particularly important if you've picked shell for it's specific pattern.