Paul and Damien's Vinlay

[shilala]

Good lesson, brother. I've developed a font-paranoia that serves me really well.
I just used a nice, blocky font last week and caught a criss-cross goof just like your W. I had to get my glasses and look over the whole thing and I found another itty bitty one that probably wouldn't have caused a problem.
I use a lot of my words over and over in different projects and dig them back out of old files. It took me half an hour yesterday to find a signature, just so I didn't have to do it all over again.

[scottp55]

First font done, messed up cut on my part due to overlapping vectors in Vivaldi prevented it from seating correctly, thus the glue lines. Emergency surgery last night wasn't totally successful----But the patient lived.
Have to concentrate the vise pressure directly on font area only I think, instead of uniform pressure. Have to work on my 7 second clamping a bit.

[scottp55]

Also have to move the "ood" left a heavy smidge.

[pappybaynes]

Scott, the inlays are really nice! Haven't done one for a year or so...think I will work on some more.

[scottp55]

Thanks Dick, Sort of been the reason I've been a PITA posting all the pics. A lot of people(newbies like me) were unaware/forgot this technique and have been asking about it. I always thought this stuff was beyond me, and Dad is over the moon that it doesn't need veneers and can come to sharp points. Glad I walked him through almost the whole process with the zebras so he knows its not for everyone. May provide an extra job up North(only 2 so far).
Scott S.,I remember that sassafras crib board you did. Was this the method you used? If so can you post a couple of your pics with the multiple wood inlays? Haven't done any(forget what Paul called it) two tone/two layer? that Paul thought I might find interesting, by just doing the same process twice.
If anybody has any pics of stuff they've done that they're proud of, Please post some pics to stimulate my gray cells
A REALLY fun/frustrating technique that teaches you a lot and deserves resurrection! Be neat to see pics of stuff done before I even knew what a Shopbot was
Time to dig some of my squirrelly wood out and put my ripping blade back on the Delta(and find my darn resaw jig and riving knife)

[shilala]

Here ya go, Scott.
I have an array of 4 of them on the Bot now, and they're driving me nuts. But they do that. The first one I made just about put me in a rubber room.
The back of these is fancy, too. There's a magnetic cover and a dug-out area for pins and stuff. I don't have any pics of that.

[shilala]

[scottp55]

Thanks Scott---So you did use this method? Nice work! I can see where doing it 3 times on the same piece could drive you crazy
How far down did you go in between VInlay's? Did you sand it all the way, or leave like .005" on each layer and then sand the whole thing at once? Just curious as zebra 1 is losing his tail from sanding zebra 2.

[shilala]

Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot you asked.
I found that handout a long time ago and printed it out. It hangs on the wall next to my shop desk on the same screw as "router bit basics".

I don't do any sanding between layers. I make a "surfacing file" that just covers the areas where I placed my inlays and I grind them down to about .05 above the surface. That's where I leave them, and I do the next series of inlays. They won't interfere cause they aren't high enough to get in the way. I do this because I only want to surface all the inlays and sand once, or stuff starts disappearing.

On the cribbage boards, I just barely surface the cherry. I tool it nice and close and clean, and do no sanding at all. I want the whole board to be exactly perfect and level depth with the table. So I don't remove it from the table or mess with it at all. Surface, done. Nice, sharp endmill, very small stepover, like 7%. Then I do the v-carving for all the rest of the male parts.

Then for the other levels I do like I said till I get them all done, and then I surface the whole piece until it's just taking up the glue and not touching the project. It takes some messing around.
When it's all done, I hit it with (maybe)80, 220, and then polish the heck out of it with 400. I have a couple Festool sanders and Festool HEPA vac, so I can get some serious sanding done in no time.
Before I sand I'll sit and pull glue out of grain with an xacto knife if there's any left at all.

If you look at the curlies on the bottom of that board, you'll see that the very fine, thin stuff is missing in a few spots.
That's the nicks from the male spots compounded by too much sanding. If I hadn't been totally sick of that project, I'd have dug out the missing spots with an xacto and used some wood filler. Then I'd have used a natural stain to make up any difference in color.

Last, but not least, I did the whole thing exactly as the tutorial said. I used .1, .2, and .3, just like in the tutorial. No deviation whatsoever.

The one thing that I've thought I'm going to try is what I picked up when I misunderstood you. I'm gonna shellac between v-carve layers on my male pieces, just to see if it helps hold the tiny stuff on the board. I think the increased surface tension will really help.
It'll add time, but it's very hard to get something like my curlies of your zebras to come out right.
If we had any smarts at all, we'd edit the files so there weren't those tiny, shallow pieces. Just make them thicker and work within the tolerance of the wood and tooling. But we ain't very bright, so I imagine we'll just keep struggling. lol

[scottp55]

Thanks Scott, I did take a bunch of "Junk" out of that "Twig" and thickened it to match my 1.2" Birdseye stock because I wanted full strength for the "butterfly" to keep that big 16" crack from splitting the "Vultures" as I had the grain running the wrong way with them.
Thinking something like an old veneer/book/cider press might work well for clamping. Jeff K also mentioned the Vice-Grip style welding clamps for wide boards, have a pair of the 6" ones and may give them a try, didn't know they also came in 12 and 16", may be worth a shot on some?
So far I've used and ONsrud .25" 60 degree engraving bit with a .002"flat, and the VOrtex 60degree VBit with good luck(still messing with feeds and speeds for male part because of the start depth ignores my pass depth). What bit did you have luck with?
Just picked up some unwaxed shellac sanding sealer,and going to replace the thinned lacquer with that on todays for both before Any carving and before second pass on male. Lacquer before first pass seemed to make a difference on the .1" depth ones, and I think would make a definite difference on super shallow ones like some guys on Vectric forum are trying.
Off to the mines