I have done inlays in the past but not since C3D added the inlay mode. I have a Walnut Platter I need to inlay a W into and did some tests today before I get to the actual platter. Attached are the male/female files for the inlay. The male part of the inlay is larger than the female half. I used CC 843 (beta) to do the files.
After cutting the male inlay I went to fit it into the female part and it would not fit. Here is a picture of the two parts side by side. You can see the maple male half is wider than the female half.
When I created the files I just left everything at default and on the male inlay just checked the Inlay box. female_test_W.c2d (52 KB) male_test_W.c2d (60 KB)
Please advise what to change to get the Maple W to fit into the Walnut W. Thanks.
I am in a turning club. We cut this piece last Friday. It is just roughed and after the inlay it will be finished. If you look at the picture you can see that a big chunk came out. The debate was to make the platter smaller or glue it back on. It was glued back on. After finishing turning if it looks bad the platter will be smaller. The thing about wood is you can take off wood but it is very hard to put it back on.
The man this platter is for is 90 years old and a retired Veterinarian. He is one of the nicest people you will ever meet.
This project is finished. Because this was a roughed out bowl it was not perfectly flat where I was going to put the W. So I did a 4" circle where I took out 0.05" to make sure things were flat. The advanced vcarve for the female part worked fine. The holly used for the male part of the inlay was a small log I cut up on the bandsaw. I tried to run it across my jointer but that did not go well. So I changed course and got a piece of plywood and used double sided tape to glue the pieces to the plywood and ran them through the planner on one side and then reversed them to get both sides flat and parallel. I had several pieces but only needed one. I left it rough because the platter will be turned to finish it.
These were my tests on some walnut and maple. Because there is only one platter I had to be sure to not mess it up. I changed font size so I wanted to make sure nothing changed.
The platter was 18.5" diameter so luckily I had a clamp that JUST reached the inlay. I tend to buy odd things that are on clearance. I have had a pair of these clamps for 10 years or more and never needed them.
@gdon_2003 Your part of the finished product looks great. I’m always amazed at how many adjustments we make when doing a job.
I started anothe inlay project topday and once I had the first piece of material clamped and ready to go I realzed that I needed to make some dimensional changes… Glad I caught it in time.
project from CICworshop, I altered it a little, used regular screws (the ones in the original project are not cheap…, I just don’t find images on my phone, possibly later today) and welding nuts, so I could add more screws per piece, I have three of those sets, works very well.
