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Thread: Leaf, vine - inlay test piece

  1. #16
    Great to see how others do this work! Really nice final result.
    I have a couple suggestions to speed things up. The stem pieces could be drawn to fit exactly as last addition, rather than cutting their ends off repocketing. You didn';t show (that I saw) how you cut off the small pieces from backer. You can tape with wide masking tape and resaw to the outside of the blade, resulting in something like those old fashioned candies on a paper tape. And lastly you can do the veining, which I"m sure you enjoyed doing by hand, with the cnc, which is good to know if you want to do lots of repeatable type of this work.

    It's funny that CNC for this work is more laborious than the most common approach now--laser cutting veneers. But there are some advantages to the thicker veneers of CNC work, and the ability to do some carving after inlaying , by hand or by cnc, and work with species and cuts unavailable in veneers (black ebony!) is a plus too.

  2. #17
    Join Date
    Jan 2012
    Location
    NW Louisiana
    Posts
    890
    Thanks, Al - glad you like it!

    I didn't do the stem pieces to the exact shape for a couple of reasons - 1) each 'leaf to vine' end of the stem was unique, no two alike. So that would have meant keeping all those stems identified for their specific location and that's more than I wanted to do. I could have made them all the same but the uniqueness is to me of greater value than having the ease of all pieces being alike. 2) making the stems to the precise shape for their respective locations would mean that I would have no leeway in gluing them in place; they would absolutely have to be glued precisely or there would be a noticeable flaw in the inlay.

    There was no backer; I used tabs to keep pieces in place. And since I cut these reversed/upside down the tabs are on top when the pieces are inlaid and will all be sanded off. I cut the tabs with flush-cutting side cutters.

    The veining was absolutely a blast to do by hand, no desire to do it with the CNC. And it was probably faster to do by hand than to define all that in the CAD/CAM software and generate the toolpaths. Yes, if I planned to do a lot of these I would more than likely do the veining with the CNC.

    If I was doing this with veneers there would be a completely different approach. I may do this again with a 15° V-bit for some steep wall inlay rather than doing the straight wall inlay like this test piece. That would allow me to get sharper corners and actually get a tighter fit on the inlay.

    David
    David
    CurlyWoodShop on Etsy, David Falkner on YouTube, difalkner on Instagram

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