I am trying to create an inlay but I continue to get gaps. I tried to follow the tutorial that carbide put out where he uses a pocket of 5 mm, and an inlay depth of 4.5 with a 1 mm space. When I used these numbers, I still had gaps. So I did my own test where I varied the depth of the inlay. I found 4 mm was pretty good to remove the gaps without leaving much of a pocket between the inlay and the board. 3.5 was better for no gaps, but left too large of a pocket. So I did a board at 4 mm inlay depth, but after surfacing there were large gaps on the sides. The dark lines around the inlay is glue, but that means there was a large gap on the sides. What am I doing wrong?
Jessica I work in inches but you can convert online to get the differences. I made a plaque with the base of mesquite and the inlay of maple. It turned out well .
I’ve never done an inlay so take this for what it is, but it looks to me like the plug just didn’t go in far enough. Is it possible you didn’t give enough space. Since this peice is scrap now, you could cut it and see if it bottomed out or if there was space to tap the plug in deeper.
