The first step was marking out the design on the pommel cap. Trying to scribe in the lines in the steel proved to be a royal pain, especially with keeping all of the lines straight on a curved surface. What I ended up doing was scanning in the design from the sword drawing, and I printed it out on sticker stock.  This allowed me to stick the design straight onto the pommel cap without worrying about the lines warping or whatever.  I cut out the design with a razor, which transferred the scribed line into the steel. I've also tried using leaving the sticker on, but that proved to wear away, leaving nothing to show where the lines on the design should be. 

Next challenge was finding something to hold the pommel. This is what pitch is for. Iit is a hard, resilient medium that will hold any shaped object firmly. It's really fascinating stuff.  When you heat it up a little, it runs like molasses and when it cools, it’s hard as a rock. For holding this pommel, it is certainly a necessity. 

Using a thin chisel, I started cutting in along the outside lines of the design.  I found it works a lot better to cut both sides of the inlay with a smaller chisel, and then go back through with the larger chisel the width of the channel.  That makes it a lot easier to make sure everything is going straight. 

Below is a picture of the cutting of the outsides of the channel. This makes it easier to control the relative straightness of the lines by dealing with multiple, thinner passes, rather than one large go with an exactly sized chisel. There's a littler larger margin for error.

Once the outer sections of the triangles are cut in, I started in on the inner points, using a similar method of cutting in the outlines. Basically, it’s the same old techniques.With the design roughly put in, it's time to deal with cleaning up the design. Included in this is filing off all of the burrs that naturally form from the chiseling process. They might be a little difficult to make out in the picture, but they form a raised ridge all around the design, concealing any possible irregularities in the lines. 

Now, it's time to go back into the design to clean everything up and make sure all of the lines, angles, and corners are good. It is also a good to make sure the depth of the channels are of a uniform depth and able to hold onto the inlay. This was fun in and of itself, given the shape of the pommel itself, but surprisingly, it wasn't that difficult to achieve and maintain. 

With the design taking shape and cleaning up nicely, it's time to prepare the design to receive the copper for the inlay. Using a straight chisel, the outside edges of the channels are raised up by cutting into the inside corners perpendicularly. This creates an undercut that the copper is forced down into, effectively anchoring the inlay. It may be difficult to tell from the picture, but there is once again a raised ridge all around the design.

Now it's time to start laying in the copper wire. While holding the wire in the grooves, it is hammered, flattening it out, as well as forcing the metal into the channel, conforming to it's shape and undercut. It's a whole lot of hammering and snipping copper wire.As you can see, the properties of copper allow it to be rather malleable, now being spread out and almost covering up the whole design. Even when you think you've spread it out enough, keep hitting it to make certain everything is forcing into where it should be.

Keep in mind that now that this side is done, I have to do the same thing to the other side. It does get a little nerve-wracking to think about how much effort has already gone into the pommel cap, and some unforeseen error could cause the whole thing to get scrapped. I try not to think about such things though.