A Redneck's guide to Vcarve Inlays.

I have never claimed to be a woodworker matter of fact until a few years ago I could barely nail two two by fours together but that all changed when I bought my first CNC router I did not know what in the hell I was doing but I knew I wanted to make stuff I didn't know why I just felt it in My DNA I just I've always liked working with my hands and I just wanted to make stuff and I started off with the usual making coasters and signs and 3D carvings and whatnot and then I found myself on YouTube trying to find some ideas on what to make and I stumbled across Broan wood and his wonderful inlaid cutting boards and I instantly knew right then that's what I want to do and so I read up on the vcarve inlay technique started making inlays in and found myself going back and forth to the hardwood store about once a week because I was making lots of mistakes matter of fact I've had some pretty expensive bonfires in my backyard from incinerating all those mistakes that I made but I kept at it and after a little while I stopped making so many mistakes I haven't perfected it yet but I'm a lot better than I used to be it was just because of perseverance and I started posting stuff that I made on my Facebook group that I'm a member of and I got lots of Kudos and accolades and lots of questions about how I did things and it was requested that I make some videos so here we are now I'm a YouTuber y'all bear with me and be patient I'm gonna try my best to explain everything as carefully as I can so maybe I can pass along a little wisdom and save you guys some bonfires too The Cutting Board I am making in this video is for a friend he has an avid deep seas fisherman and he is also a woodworker he's a woodworker I'm not but he really really digs the stuff that I do that I'm able to do the CNC machine and I've sewed him some of the videos that have inspired me and he saw Bruin Woods YouTube video of the shipping well and he really liked it and uh that's one of my favorites and because he's a deep sea fisherman with a nice boat I thought I'd make him one as a housewarming and um so here we are now I did not want to copy exactly what Bruin would did I thought that would maybe be an insult and plus I didn't want to come off as a copycat so um I purchased the uh the vector from the designer who originally created it and a link to his pages will be down in the description below please check him out super nice guy and I changed it up a little bit added some stuff to it to make it mine so I hope you enjoy what I've done with it one of the main differences that you'll see between my board and bronwood board is his board is made out of hard maple and I'm making mine out of black walnut and it's quite difficult to get any kind of decent contrast when you're using all dark woods so I had this idea of making a background inside of the board of the black walnut and it kind of gives it this picture frame effect that I'm really digging so what you're seeing here now is I'm creating the blank for the hard maple inlay that will be the background to that board one thing that I'll do when I make a cutting board I'll make the board and I'll let it sit on a shelf for several weeks so it will acclimate to the environment if you've ever done anything like this before you know how easily it'll warp and I live in the Deep South where it's generally anywhere from 80 to 100 humidity every day and man oh man is it a pain in the butt to try to keep wood stabilized in that kind of environment and I've had really good luck to I'll buy my wood from the from the hardwood lumber yard and I'll let it bat sit uncut on a shelf for three four five six weeks then I'll make the cutting board and then I'll also let it sit a few weeks and then I can come back and surface it off and it'll generally hold its shape uh not all the time I had some difficulties with this board because the weather got a little funky around here and I had some rainy days and the board would warp to the point where I just couldn't work that day because as you all know you need a nice flat surface for you know to do these inlays so they'll stay consistent so I'd let the rain dry up and give it about a day and when I went back out in my shop it had settled back down into a nice flat surface if you've studied to be carve inlay technique there is what I in my opinion call a misnomer that you have got to have a glue gap between the inlay and the pocket and you don't the reason being is is you're dealing with end grain and engrange like a sponge if you see the amount of glue I'm I'm using here you'll see that I have barely any squeeze out because that ingrain is going to soak up that glue and it'll seep up into the inlay and into the pocket and it'll help the inlay bond to the pocket not only that but my settings um I've got I have found the settings to where I have zero glue Gap whatsoever now it's just tricky because if you go too far then you'll have you won't have nice seams on your inlay and if you don't cut far enough then you'll have the dreaded glue Gap [Music] case in point if I were to have had a glue gap on this particular inlay is so large as you can see here it's almost the size of the board if there were the glue Gap then the center would bow up and when I went to surface it after gluing because of it being bowed up the surfacing would eat away most of the thickness of the inlay and leave a very thin piece there in the center so when I would cut for cut a pocket for another inlay there would be barely anything there for the inlaid to be glued to so this way as you can see I can maintain the thickness of that inlay for it to remain consistent and if you see the little dark line there at the bottom of the inlay between it and a pocket that's the dried glue for anyone interested I'll share my my my settings in the description below I use vcarve Pro so those settings will be for B carb I'm going to be adding a sunset to the scene of this board and I'm going to use Osage orange for that now you'll notice the grain here and what I've done is usually if you do an end grain inlay of sorts or even the boards you'll cut it into squares but this one I've left the whole grain so I can get this pattern here to kind of give shape of the Sun I come out with this idea it's kind of secondary waste board um because the the inlay blank is so small it's sometimes hard to clamp down so I will secure it with screws and when I would do it into my waste Board of the CNC machine I'd end up with little divots everywhere and that was generally the main thing that ruined my wasteboard I do a pretty decent job of keeping my wasteboard nice and clean and all those little screw holes was mainly the reason why I'd end up having to resurface it so I come up with this little secondary waste board and it's worked out pretty good so far foreign if you ever have ambition to doing detailed inlays like this you're just not going to get the detail out of a 90 or 60 degree 60 degree B bit you're going to need something fairly narrow and the bit that I use for my inlays is a little over five degrees in an angle um and you got to go slow with it the the tip of this this bit is so fine that if I'm not careful I can break the tip off it'll ruin your day so I'll run the feeds and speeds on on the engraving bit at about 30 to 40 inches per minute and around 16 000 RPM on the speeds and they use an eighth inch up cut for the clearing passes and I run that pretty slow too because especially on your on the inlay blank because of it being such an aggressive start death uh there's really no way to to control your depth of cut it's just going to plunge all the way to the to the complete depth and if you're not careful I've broken a quarter inch bit or excuse me eighth inch spit as well so you got to go slow the wood that I'm using for the well is called Wingate and it's a beautiful wood but it has some drawbacks as you can see it's it's very porous and though it's pretty dense it's brittle and if you're not careful you'll tear this out generally if I'm going to have some cosmetic defects that's going to be in the Wingate and I have to go back and do a little damage control um it's just hard to get it perfect like the the others I think Walnut is probably the best wood for for carving inlays most anything you can do on the CNC it's my favorite foreign I'm also using Walnut for the water and I'm putting clouds in the scene and I'll use this same wood for the clouds as well so the water and the clouds will match and I had this piece of Walnut and it was had a lot of sap wood in it I didn't think I'd ever be able to use it but I ended up cutting it to where the grain would kind of book Matched you can see there and that you have some very dark spots and then predominantly light spots everywhere and I gave this a go to see if I could maybe give a little definition to the water and the clouds and it seemed like it was success I'm I'm digging it and a lot of videos You'll see guys when they're putting their inlays into the glue up you'll see them Hammer them in and they'll use a wood Mallet or a rubber mallet and I did that and I guess I'm too heavy-handed I have split some inlays before despite how careful I was I would always end up breaking it so now I just use my hands foreign if you're going to do multiple inlays like this your machine is going to have to be capable of a fair amount of accuracy and repeatability if you see right here I'm cutting right up next to the previous inlay and at times if it's a few thousandths off it'll make a little like crap so you've got to dial in your machine you've got to make sure it's perfectly Square you got to be sure that your stepper distance is correct because if you don't that means that's the difference between success and failure this is the inlay blank for the sky what will be the clouds and if you remember what I told you a while ago about the piece of Walnut that I had that had a ton of sapwood in it I thought I'd never be able to use it and then I got to thinking the way I have this cut you see is kind of book Matched um I thought that would kind of give me some definition in the clouds some light and dark light and dark and my gamble was correct it turned out pretty decent the ship was probably the scariest part of this entire project because number one is the centerpiece of the whole image and it was the most detailed cut of any of the cuts that I made um it's got some pretty sharp angles and I used Wingate for the inlay and like I mentioned earlier it's fairly brittle and easily to tear out and I was there was a high probability for this failing and glue in this monster in was a was a chore to trying to get that glue and all the little cracks and crevices before the glue dried type on three supposedly has the most open time of any glue but right there toward the end it started getting a little peanut buttery with me and I was worried I wouldn't get the inlay in it in time and it would fail um but I got it but it wasn't without a headache I had to have a beer after this one man I ain't even lying foreign you know ceasing well it just wouldn't be complete without seagulls right so I cut some seagulls into it and I use black walnuts for that inlay as well it's a darker Walnut than what I use for the water in the sky so I have a little contrast a bit more definition they'd stand out oh foreign one more time and then I sand and sand and sand and I can promise you I'd rather sit through a root canal and sand anything this is I guarantee a labor of love I'll generally start off with about 80 grit and work up to about 220 get a nice finish on the uh on the on the end grain here I'm cutting a 45 degree bevel in the bottom just adds a little a little different touch to it and here I'm cutting handles little pockets in the bottom for handles and I don't didn't have to cut these very deep because I used standoffs on the bottom rubber feet for it to sit on so it's pretty easy to get you your hands underneath to pick it up also use Rubios on the as a finish the guy that's getting the board said that it would never see a knife so I use Rubios so it wouldn't be any maintenance for it like oil and wax would have to be and here you can see the pores in that Wing gave in that's the only drawback about using Wingate but it's such a pretty dark wood it's really nice to use in inlays I hope that everything I've mentioned here somebody has learned something again my passion is be carve inlay and I love doing them I don't think I'm the best at them yet but I'm working on it and I can't thank you enough for watching please like And subscribe if you like this video I plan to upload some more here in the near future so I'll see you soon take care

Channel: M&S Woodworks

Views: 37,878

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Id: t3whlKDAxYY

Length: 19min 8sec (1148 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023