A lot of people make fun of Harleys for being unreliable. Here’s a fact for you: 98% of all Harleys made are still on the road today. The other 2% made it home. {citation needed}
A little wedding present for my friend - I made a charcuterie board/serving board with an epoxy inlay of the church they got married at. Followed some tutorials on youtube on how to trace over the image from google maps using Inkscape to get an SVG. It’s one of a kind!
…and here are the three attempts I screwed up in the process!
Fail 1 (bottom): Epoxy not deep enough and sanded too shallow
Fail 2 (top): Used epoxy ink which stained the whole grain of the wood (ended up using mica powder instead for the successful version)
Fail 3 (left): Depth of cut too deep and the endmill cut a big chunk out before I could even pour any epoxy!
That’s a great gift with real meaning for the couple! Turned out great.
My biggest learnings with epoxy inlays is to seal the open grain of the inlay pattern. Mica powder included, sometimes a second or third sealer coat on larger grain species wood/
First attempt at a personalization. I’m going to an engagement party and decided to plane down a Cherry board, chop off a good chunk, sand and rout it, and carve their names with some “extras”.
My wife took it from there with some epoxy. I planed and sanded it some more. Then she put a couple coats of Tung Oil on it. Pleased with the outcome. Like @Redlander said in a recent post, I think some sealer before the epoxy would be of great benefit to keep it more precise… which I didn’t do on this one.
I’ve used regular wood glue, clear epoxy and spray paint in some cases. It helps if the sealer is applied on the “thicker” consistency side. It minimizes its own wicking action. I try to leave a little extra stock height when using epoxy so it can be machined or sanded off to ensure the top grain texture is clean and tight at the epoxy interface.
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I will not tell her I found something.
