Three Piece Inlay - Took Way Too Long

[t]

I did a smallish inlay today that was 1 1/4" square in its gross dimensions.

I first cut and excavated a 1 1/4" square into the cherry chest that I was working on. Then I cut, fit and glued in a square of Ceylonese Satinwood veneer. Then I cut and excavated that to fit a 7/8" square of Central American Redheart that was sawn out to slightly more than the thickness of the Satinwood veneer, leaving a border of the Satinwood showing. Then I cut a numeral "1" out of holly on the bandsaw, rasped, filed and sanded, and set that in the center of the Redheart square. leaving a scant 3/32" space at top and bottom showing on the Redheart.

This took me almost six hours!

If anyone has a better way of doing this, I'd like to hear about it.

tom watson

(who didn't get to put the first coat of finish on the chest today)

[Morris Dovey]

Hmm - I think I might have been able to shorten the total time to between 15 and 20 minutes using my 'bot.

[Zz Yzx]

[t]

You really do Suck, Morris.

And I mean that in the best possible way.

tom watson

[Morris Dovey]

Well, the job could go faster but I allowed for programming time and for a trial run on scrap veneer.

A /third/ run could probably be done in under a minute - but you'd probably still want to spend at least a minute gluing and another minute and a half sanding.

What's it going to take to get you to build one of these things for yourself?

[t]

Pix posted on ABPW.

This photo is prior to sanding flat and coloring in but it should give you the general idea.

tom watson

[t]

Check the pix out on ABPW and give me a clue.

tom watson

[Morris Dovey]

Not bad. I think I might have run the redheart grain horizontally, but that's just me - everybody's an art critic and if you'd done that, someone else would have said to run the grain vertically. :-)

[t]

I was actually asking for a clue on the ability of the bot to replicate the triple inlay.

I have a 32" x 16" cherry box elevation with strong horizontal grain and a 1 1/4"square inlay laid into it.

The choice to run both the Satinwood and the Redheart on the vertical was to focus the eye. The Holly, naturally, has no apparent grain.

Might be bad visual theory. I've certainly been wrong before.

tom watson

[Morris Dovey]

The 'bot could handle the cutting without problem. If you're really fussy about wanting to hide the bit radius at the inside corners, you could use a 1/64" bit (which would shrink the radius to 1/128").

The only ticklish place might be the serif at the top of the '1', but I think there'd be no problem if cutting started at the top of the serif and proceeded counterclockwise around the figure.

The only fixturing I think you'd need would be some double-stick tape.

It'd be a lot easier to cut the cherry before assembly - and perhaps to assemble and sand the inlay elements before assembly as well.

Dunno. I've been told that, as an artist, I'm a pretty good engineer; and that, as an engineer, I'm better as an artist. :-)

I'm not sure this has a right or wrong.

[t]

How clean a cut do you get out of that puppy on veneer? Our single axis CNC chews the shit out of solid oak. I'd hate to see what it did to sub 1/32" stuff.

I'm fascinated by the concept but worried about the real world problems.

A triple inlay means that you hog out an initial square (in this case), glue in the base veneer, hog out the reduced square (once again, in this case), glue that veneer in and level it off enough for the next step, and then incise for the numeral (see supra).

I know that I took most of six hours to do this but I don't see how the bot can reduce the time to anything like what you talked about earlier.

I'd be happy to be wrong.

tom watson

tom watson

[jo4hn]

I use my Sawzall. Does great inlay work. Augmented with a hand sledge and a cold chisel. boop, jo4hn

[Robatoy]

I use an adze for my inlay work. I call it Adztech.

groan, r

[Puckdropper]

jo4hn wrote in news:KM- dncgUP4CubGbVnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

What IS the best temperature to use a chisel at? How about sharpening it? Do I need to keep an ice cube in my pocket to cool the chisel blade for a better, smoother cut? Or does it cut better warm?

Puckdropper

[Morris Dovey]

A sharp cutter will do a pretty good job. The edge will not be as sharp as if it'd been cut with a scalpel, but the result (after sanding) will be indistinguishable.

I didn't take any pictures when I machined mahogany veneer. I did take some close-up photos of the (much fuzzier) edges produced with a 1/32" bit in some 3/4" baltic birch, and they can be seen at

exactly as they came off the machine. In making those parts, the gross cuts were made with a 1/4" end mill that was about ready for sharpening and the fine cuts were made with a 1/32" end mill that had only about an hour of cutting time.

With the CNC approach, you can cut all the parts and then assemble working from the outside toward the center. The little JBot is good to (-0,+1/4800"), so there's not much need to worry about whether parts will fit properly.

Well, hogging out the cherry will take the most time because it involves the longest toolpath - but it's only a 1.25" square so it won't really take all that long. The other parts are simple 2D shapes that only need single-pass profile cuts. With a 2.5"/sec feed rate, it really wouldn't take long.

[Upscale]

One might argue that he got six hours of pleasure out of building it. Morris got maybe twenty minutes worth with most of that pleasure going to his thumb which pushed the button to get the 'bot started.

[David G. Nagel]

Just remember to never force any fit. Use a bigger hammer.

[Morris Dovey]

The following dropped into my mailbox this morning. I've never done an inlay by hand, so I'll just pass it along without comment:

>

[t]

This is really interesting. Can you give me a line on some reading material about the basics of CNC routing?

tom watson

[Robatoy]

I must warn you. Betty Ford is opening a wing just for CNC freaks.

I took the plunge, I blame Morris.

You haven't seen Steve Knight here for a while, eh, Tom?... Well?

Morris...looks like you have a fresh one.............