This is not nearly as impressive as what most of you have all made, but this was my first real project with the xl. I got the machine to mix it with much of my other woodworking and it worked out amazingly. He key with this is it made my wife happy and excited about what I can with the machine, which is a win in my book.
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@osu22go it’s great!. Frank Lloyd Right would be proud!. Can I ask you how you painted the design?. I’ve been looking into filling pockets with color and haven’t found a solution. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
No problem at all. I was originally going to inlay the letters using walnut, but my wife wanted me to match the tiles better. So I ended up mixing two part epoxy with black rit dye (it’s a powder) that I bought at Michaels. I cut the letters .20 inches deep to make sure I could put a decent amount in, but I’m not sure I needed to go that deep. I bought the tiles from Motawi. Let me know if you have any other questions!
I see now. The flower designs are tiles. I thought you had milled that too. The epoxy and rit dye is a good idea. will try that. Were you able to sand after applying the filler?. My concern is that I’ll dirty the surrounding areas of the letters filling them and that I’ll have to sand to clean the surface and in the process, dull the letters.
Yes, I put the filler on thick then sanded the whole piece until I saw no more black. Since oak is porous, I did have to sand it a little bit to clean it all up, but using a few grits of sand paper in a random orbit sander made quick work of it. I made sure it was plenty hard before sanding (waited a couple of days) and it did dull slightly after the sanding. However, once I sprayed the lacquer on (after I put a gel stain on the whole piece), it turned jet black again.
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Here is a trick I learned: Before painting it, apply a coat of water based polyurethane. It stops the paint from bleeding into the porous grains of the wood.
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