High School Project - Jewelry Box with Inlays

Hey everyone,

I'm a junior in high school and I really enjoy woodworking. Currently I am taking Materials Processing and Machine Programming 2, which is essentially a woodshop class. For our first project we had to build a jewelry box.

Most kids made theirs out of poplar and then stained them. I decided to make mine out of mahogany. I'm more of a walnut guy, but I had never worked with mahogany before so I thought I would give it a try.

I decided to do some walnut and maple stripe inlays, which were very easy and I was able to get them to fit very tightly with no gaps.

I then decided to put a purpleheart heart inlay on the front of the box. My school has a laser CNC so I cut both the vector outline for the heart in the box and the inlay itself using the laser. The fit is almost perfect, but the laser wouldn't allow me to account for the kerf of the laser, which is very small but does leave a gap.

On the top of the box I am going to inlay my girlfriend's name in walnut. Once again the laser left a gap so the inlay isn't perfect.

Questions: Regarding the inlays:
- 1) What should I use to glue the inlays in? Some websites recommend cyanoacrylate, and others epoxy, but would Titebond II work?
- 2) What do I use to fill the gaps? I have seen that many people recommend fine saw dust and cyanoacrylate.
- 3) If I fill the gaps using cyanoacrylate, do I need to preseal the wood?

1) depends on how you're going to finish it. Both ca and epoxy can darken the surrounding wood, but an oil or laquer finish should end up the same color, making the glue invisible. Tightbond would work fine, but keeping it from squeezing out all over would be difficult.

2) Sawdust and ca would work. However, those gaps appear to be rather large, and you'll probably see the black burn lines after you fill it. You might want to try filling with epoxy, tinted black, which would give a nice thin black outline around the inlays, and hide the burned edges. But you'll need to seal everything good before filling, so the black epoxy doesn't stain the surrounding wood. Practice on a scrap piece first!!

3) Again, depends on the finish. Test on some scrap. put some glue on the scrap, and when dry, finish it. If you can see the glue, then you need to seal first.


I've also filled gaps with sawdust and polyurethane glue, and sawdust and epoxy. Even sawdust and tightbond will work, but again, depending on the finish used, results can vary. Good luck.

I think you should re-program the inlays and allow for the gap. If you can lay out the lettering and heart in whatever program you used, you should be able to offset the geometry to allow for the gap. Try a sample in some scrap- about .005-.01" offset should compensate for the laser line; this needs to be done with routers also. Filling gaps with glue and sawdust is never a pretty sight in woodworking projects.

I'm with Rico55. You can probably get the correct fit that way. Nothing looks better than good fit.

Are you sure the software doesn't have a place to enter an "offset" value? You would also tell it inside or outside.

John

Some pictures of the build.

Wow, that looks great, nice job.