...still waiting on the oils...

So in the meantime, I've been playing with finishes to the copper inlays.

At first, I just took to it with the blowtorch and got some interesting effects:



Then, after not being able to get any 30% ammonia solution, I just got some cloudy ammonia from the supermarket to see how that went with various tarnishing agents:



Interesting, but not very nice. I then soaked it in bleach for a few hours, sanded it back with 600 grit wet/dry paper and torched it again:



Now we're getting somewhere! I'm seeing a lot of interesting colourations show up, but it's still not quite what I'm after.
I sanded it back again, this time using 1200-grit after an initial 600 round. I also torched it while holding it in my (insulated) hands and a tap running nearby. So, as soon as the colour changed to what I wanted in one spot, I immediately quenched the metal and moved to another spot.



Bam. That's so close to perfect, that I'm going to leave it there. And here it is in context:





You'll notice that the cavity for the inlay hasn't been carved terribly precisely, so there's a bunch of gaps around some of the edges. My plan to combat that is by flooding the cavity with a super heavy shellac mix. I've made up a small batch of that to be so saturated that it simply won't dissolve any more dried flakes. Should work a treat, in theory.

Good thing this is only the practice build!