I was inspired to cut some hexs. I did this test today and plan to fill with epoxy then sand off the bottom skin to make it see through. Super excited to see how it goes - thanks all for the inspiration.
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Thanks - I used a 1/8th compression bit and this is African Mahogany. Only .48" thick, so it took 15 mins.
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Just a suggestion from a woodturner who turns pens. Pour the coloured remnants into a moldor spare cup…good if you have more than one colour at a time. Once hardened sell/ give it to your local wood turning club for use as pen blanks.
Bingo!!! Another income stream?
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Inspired by @MikeG and @AndyC, I decided to try the “and cut the back away” technique as well.
It came out ok, lots of little flaws and learnings
(the epoxy brand I used does not like being mixed at 60F, it has infinite bubbles if you do. Lesson: Heat it to 80F first by putting it on a heating vent for 30 minutes. also very small but deep holes don’t work well, the surface tension of the epoxy works against you there… must use a syringe with small enough opening for those)
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That’s really beautiful @fenrus, I really like the multitude of colors!
Would it be possible to coat the back, I’m guessing where the flaws might be, with a small amount of clear epoxy? You could squeegee the excess off with something like an old credit card perhaps?
I did coat both sides. the problem was that (unlike the rest) I did not pre-heat the epoxy for the coating layers… which means there’s a lot of small bubbles in the coating layer ;(
(but not in the “core” layers where I did take the time to preheat the epoxy bottles)
lesson learned, always pre-heat the epoxy in winter even if I’m going to use only a tiny amount
(in an earlier step I learned the hard way that preheated epoxy cures much quicker so the working time is really only 10 to 15 minutes, which is not a lot if you’re trying to carefully fill small holes with colored epoxy and try not to spill on neighboring other color small holes)
Ha. Then this must be why I got bubbles in my pour yesterday, even though I did it the same way I usually do, and used a torch on the surface after pouring. It all looked bubble-free, but since it was pitch black epoxy I did not see the bubbles captured below the surface, and they came back to bite me when I surfaced the inlay. Sigh… and it was barely more than 60°F in the garage then. I’ll make a mental note to try heating up the bottles next time!
@fenrus @Julien, Yes, you Gents are correct about the ambient temperature, unless you’re going to use the really slow dry epoxy, but even then surface tension will bite.
Still a beautiful project though, thanks for posting it!
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Picked up a set of three of these, 1/2, 1 and 2 cup sizes, they work awesome, thank you for the suggestion!
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I had down another set of these, but was waiting to post until the recipient actually had them in hand before posting since the said recipient is part of this forum. Unfortunately, out of the six packages sent almost 1 month ago, this package is the only one not yet delivered 
So after speaking with the recipient about this and how I likely will get to remake them, I thought I’d go ahead and post the results. Some of the best so far on the coloring!
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#WhenYouMasterATechnique
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Wash your container with warm, soapy water as soon as you finish your pour and epoxy cleansing up easily. Invest in silicone covered stir sticks and wash the same way.
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Just starting with epoxy.
In oak, I’ve done an initial sealing coat with a brush. It’s tedious, but it works.
Has anyone tried any sort of spray can product? Spray lacquer? Spray poly? etc? It would be much easier to do 2-3 quick light coats, seal the surface, and then do the epoxy pour.
This was done with 1 sealing coat brushed on. If I stuck to it, I’d do 2 next time, as you can see some spots where bubbled came up continuously, and eventually the surface set and there was no more popping of bubbles.
Also on the list is a slower cure epoxy that takes 24 hours to alleviate this.
I had another test piece in pine though, with 1 seal coat, I managed to get 0 bubbles!
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Looks Great @greg5 ! There’s no reason that you couldn’t seal the wood surface with a spray polyurethane before epoxy to prevent color bleeding, if that’s a concern. Just a finish pass over the top with your planner, (Ah-hem, Shapeoko) after the epoxy is cured works great too! One thing about that though, wait for the epoxy to completely cure for two reasons:
The epoxy shrinks as it cures.
It will stick to the end mill flutes like melted aluminum if it’s not. Just kidding, it’s much easier to clean off the flutes if you do get melting. And the thing with smoothing plastic is that it is plastic, raise your feedrate and lower your router/spindle RPM a bit to prevent melting.
Good luck in the contest! Edit: Well, I thought I saw you had an entry in the newest contest, misread that apparently!
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oh and epoxy chips are static like there is no tomorrow. they go EVERYWHERE and stick to ANYTHING
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Funnnnn 
Noted. Already wishing the SweepyV2 somehow had replaceable “fibers”.
Going to pick up some spray poly and try to seal oak and see how the bubbles fair on some cutoffs.
A carpenter friend also suggested maple as something that is less fibrous for tearout, and might seal a bit better than oak.
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yeah oak is pretty nasty for many CNC things; long open fibers… very stringy very porous
especially red oak.
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Dang! Noted, and maple seems to be in a comparable price point as oak so… maple it is! Plus seems fitting for Canada.
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