Testing inlay techniques

[Kayvon]

I ran a test of V-Carve inlay techniques to see how they'd turn out. I chose a small design (1.8" tall, 0.6" wide) with intricate detail to test on.

The top portion is end-grain on end-grain. This worked surprisingly well. The very top bit is maple, which obviously blends into the maple background. Below that is purpleheart endgrain. The detail turned out very nicely, but you can see some tearout near the middle. I rushed the job, using superglue and an accelerator, rather than doing things right. Had I known I was going to document it, I would have taken my time to secure it correctly and let it cure overnight.

The portion below that is brass. Brass powder is remarkably easy to acquire by grinding away at a brass rod with a dremel tool. Just took a couple minutes. I stuffed the powder in the hole, added some superglue, and let it cure overnight like I should have.

The very bottom is copper. Grinding a copper penny is much hard and more time-consuming than brass. I'm not going to say I used a pre-1983 copper penny here because I don't know if that's legal.

I'm impressed with how these turned out. I'm going to have to use them in a real project now.

[bill z]

Kayvon,

Looks great from here.

Thanks for the picture.

Have you given any thought to doing inlay on your clock face?

[Kayvon]

I plan to do inlays on the next clock. I think I'll keep the current one the way it is, at least for now. Next one can be fancier.