Working on a cutting board and the male part of the inlay is a mess. In the pic, I’ve spent at least 45 minutes on it with a brass brush and it’s going to take twice that long with an Exacto knife to clean it up (if I can even do it)
The board itself in walnut machined beautifully but the maple inlay tore badly. I havent experienced it to this degree in previous boards.
The bits I used were an 1/8 in. upcut and an Amana 30 degree Vee. The board was cut to .25 deep. The plug was .242 (.08 glue gap) and .10 standoff. 60 in/min feed, .125 DOC
PS i looked at the Vee bit to see if I might have damaged the tip but to the naked eye it looked fine,
Any ideas on why the maple inlay had so much tearout/fuzziness?
Maple does that. Especially end grain. The grain is very stringy. I find it better to cut the v-bit first, then the clearing bit.
Try running the clearing bit again. Watch it & see if it’s helping. Another strategy is to seal the fuzzies, i.e. the bottom corners, and then run the clearing bit again. The sealer will bind & stiffen the fibers so they can be cut cleaner.
Is it acceptable to run the 1/8” clearing bit again (or on the first pass) with an 0.001” off set to the outside of the vector? It would be on the very bottom of the plug and based on the plug height would it not just be milled off after the glue dried?
I ask because it seems the majority of the left over material is at the transition point of the clearing bit and V bit.
I think so. I agree the fuzzies are most likely attached to the bottom of the angled wall, so cutting just a smidge into the wall, in the area that is in the top gap anyways, should work well.
An easy way to do this is to program it with an undersized tool, 0.105" dia would remove an extra 0.010" in that bottom corner. Then run it on the machine with your 1/8" bit.
