Charlie....
Cut my first inlay with 60 deg bit, .1 depth. This was just scrap pine , some of the very fine details got lost because of tear-out. This was a 3 x 3 hummingbird. Pretty happy with this result, I believe if this was a better wood it would have come out way better.
Joe....
Hi Joe,
That came out pretty good! All those little detail shapes and things can be super sketchy but it looks like you didn't have any issues with machine squareness. Lots of glue and clamping really hard seem to be the ticket :]
I'm wondering if with the proper Male Inlay operation type implemented, if having a typical glue gap is fine, but then having the saw gap be about as narrow as possible would be better - to where glue can be all mushed in there as well so that the female face can be milled off and the glue acts as support for all the narrow bits of the plug. Another idea is to manipulate everything so that the design is actually deeper into the female side - expanding the design or offsetting more. The catch there is that narrow gaps will close up, so it would have to take into consideration the actual desired shape itself, but make the female and male halves so that once they're glued together the design results from milling a desired thickness off the female to reach the original intended design. Then you'd know that all of the design is tightly glued and embedded down there where tearout would be less likely to occur with the thin bits of a design.
Anyway, keep it up Joe! :]
- Charlie
