Some of my first inlay work

[knight_toolworks]

I wish I could claim I was the smart guy that came up with the method but I was not. I used v carve to make both pieces. I learned a lot of lessons. Use lots of glue use even more clamping pressure a lot of pressure all over to get a good fit. Cut the inlay slowly as there is a lot of force involved. A quirk of v carve when doing this if you tell v carve to start at .2 and the flat is .2 the finished cut is .4 or right about there. So you can be removing a lot of material at once with the vee bit. So I started going 60 ipm and really making sure the wood is held well. I used a larger piece of scrap mdf for the vacuum table to hold but I found I needed more so I used brads to hold it in place then I used brads on the corners of the wood to hold it to the scrap mdf. It does not take much effort to remove the wood and it holds pretty well. Also a sharp bit is important, my 60 was getting dull so the start and flame rose was done with a 90.
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[knight_toolworks]

one more
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[myxpykalix]

Steve,
For being a "newbie" that is absolutely FANTASTIC!! I had read a tutorial on another forum about inlays. How long did it take you to cut the mirror inlay? My assumption is you glue the two pieces together, then you basically remove the "back" off the dark wood. Being as the light wood has a bit of a curve to it how did you cut/plane/sand that off? If you have any other pics i'd love to see them. Good Job!

[tony_mac]

Hi Steve,

WOW - Excellent work with superb detail and great to see the results!

I guess we should thank Paul Z for figuring out this machining strategy and taking the time to document the process.

Paul wrote a document detailing how to use this machining technique and it's available off the Vectric Forum.

http://vectric.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6046#6046

Thanks again,

Tony

[paul_z]

Steve,

Simply outstanding! Is the rose piece intended to become a hand mirror? It's giving me some ideas for really nice presents.

The toolworks inlay is also great! If one made this as part of a business card holder and placed a few of them around town ... but that would just cause a lot of phone calls and eliminate all spare time.

Your work is an inspiration; I've got to get back to making inlays.

Paul Z

[knight_toolworks]

The rose kind of looks like a mirror. Not real happy with the shape I just wanted to get rid of excess wood. It will be a little thing for my daughter’s graduation. It needed better planning though (G) right now I bandsaw the excess wood off and then run it through the planer. That’s pretty fast but the glue is chewing up the knives so maybe I will do it on the cnc. It’s just a hassle to set it up for the small boards. I need a small vac setup for this work.
Thanks for the link I was going to include it but forgot.
I think the mirror was about 45 minutes. Using a 1/8” bit to remove the flat spots helped but sometimes it is no faster. If I could run a more normal speeds it would be pretty fast but that is not a good idea really it seems. The logo had a fair amount of chipout you can see in person. I did it with my onsrud 60 vee. I like the centurion ones better I think.