Coasters with Walnut / Epoxy Inlays

Gallery
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I made some coasters for my daughter. The coasters are band logos for bands that you old timers may not have heard of, lol! I wanted them to be beefy so that maybe they will stick around for awhile and be appreciated. They are 4.5" x 4.5", and the coaster is Cherry with a Walnut inlay. This was my first project since buying VCarve, and my first time trying inlays. They are not perfect, but not bad overall. Done using a 60 deg .25" V-bit and Ol’ Reliable #201 .25" flat end mill.

Note: Since these are most likely copyrighted, I am not selling these to anyone.

Feeds and Speeds:
Flat mill: 74 / 24
V-bit: 30 / 15
RPM: 19000

Pictures:
Carving in progress, it was easier and less time consuming to do the pockets on multiple coasters in one toolpath, but the inlays were carved one at a time to make it easier to glue together and saw apart:

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All together:

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Slash from Guns N Roses - this one is really good I think.

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Red Hot Chili Peppers - got a little too happy with the sanding

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Foo Fighters

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Rollling Stones - I thought this was really good as well

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Metalica - Centers of the A’s were too low to sand to

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Very nice! How did you do the walnut inlay? Drag knife-cut veneer, or?

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Used a 60 Deg V-bit in VCarve. Followed the settings in this youtube video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYnO8kSHQ1c

You carve the pocket for the inlay, then flip your vectors horizontally and carve the space around the vectors to make the inlay. You glue the two parts together, then saw off the excess. Then sand flat. It isn’t as beautiful or precise as doing traditional inlays, but its a hell of a lot faster this way. Also, I’m too much of an amateur to do it the veneer or old school way.

Also, @Adam_Xett had a great post here recently where he talks about some improvements on doing this method:
http://community.carbide3d.com/t/vcarve-inlays-with-vcarve-desktop-details-and-discoveries/6552

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Those are really cool! Nice work!

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Wow, it may not be as precise as the old-school way, but you get bonus points for creativity! Plus they came out really nice.

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Made some more coasters for another of my daughters, but this time I wanted to try epoxy for the inlay material. Mainly I just wanted to learn a new skill. Same basic design as the original coasters (4.5" x 4.5" Cherry wood). The sea shell ones were done with a 1/8" flat end mill and a 0.1" DOC, followed up with a 1/16" flat mill running an inside contour operation, just to sharpen up the corners. The Tiger and the Swimmer were done with a 60-deg V-bit because it worked better for those vectors. Everything designed and toolpaths set in VCarve Desktop 9. Epoxy went fine, although if I do that small an amount again (it was less than an 1 ounce for each color), I will use syringes to measure instead of little plastic cups. I finished them with a spray on shellac, but I didn’t like it and think I will stick with spray lacquer for these.

Edit: My phone doesn’t do the colors I added to the epoxy justice. The coloring turned out really well I think.

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these look great, the colour really came out well, what did you use to colour the epoxy? I made a couple and just mixed the epoxy with black acrylic paint, which worked well for black but not sure how it would come out with brighter colours.

Thanks for sharing, they came out really well, I use Vectric Aspire and love it, I use it for about 80% of my SO3 XXL projects

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I bought this stuff from Amazon on a whim, as it is pretty much the same product sold in most of the craft supply stores around me (Michaels, Hobby Lobby, etc). The pigments have some nice metallic flakes of some kind in them so they get little specks of color besides just the pigments. It took very little pigment per ounce of epoxy to get a bold color. Maybe a 1/10 of a gram, if that.
Edit: Pearlescent, that’s the name of the effect I was looking for. They give a nice pearlescent effect.

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