Gift for my Mother in law

John, the box is beautiful. I really like that houndstooth dovetails. They add an extra element for sure. That is an impressive piece of work.

-- You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. (Plato)

Very nice job!

-- Gary, East TX -- The longest journey begins with a single step.

Love those dovetails, they really set the box off nicely. The inlay looks awesome from here. Excellent work.

-- Jim Hallada, Chesterfield, VA

John,

That doesn’t look sloppy at all! I am going to try to do inlay in a cutting board next. When you say you eye-balled the offset do you mean you didn’t use an inlay routing set? What is the inlay made of and how thick is it? Your stuff looks just great.

Steve

-- Steve

Those dovetails are awesome. The inlay looks great to me… I’m still not quite sure how you did it, but then again I don’t really know anything about inlay.

-- Check out my new website! http://www.theeasellife.com

Beautiful! I, too, am curious about the inlay material.

-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"

Eyeballing the offset was to account for the thickness of the 1/32 inch dremel bit shank, 1/8 inch I think. I would position the french curve template about a 1/16 away from the line I wanted to rout, thus the eyeball comment. http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Special_tools_for:_Routing/1/Carbide_Downcut_Inlay_Router_Bits/Pictures.html#details http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Special_tools_for:_Routing/1/Precision_Router_Base/Pictures.html#details
Kind of like a template bushing for a router, you would make the template opening larger to account for the bushing. I just rode the dremel bit shank on the mdf french curve. The problem was stopping and starting the routing of the groove to move the mdf french curve. Thats when the grooves overlapped and if you look closely you can see it. The inlay was black dyed pearwood sheets of veneer glued together to make 1/16 thickness. Steve Latta brought it to class and I can’t find the stuff anywhere. I think that’s what they used back in the day. We would use a slicing gauge that we made in class (http://www.lie-nielsen.com/catalog.php?cat=549#) to cut the 1/16 thick veneer into roughly 1/8 inch strips. Next we would use a class made thicknessing gauge (http://www.lie-nielsen.com/catalog.php?cat=549#) to thickness the inlay strip to fit in the routed groove. For the tight curves a soldering iron and some water in a spray bottle would bend the strips so the wouldn’t break when bending them. Some elmers white glue in a plastic syringe to put in the groove. Then you press the inlay in the groove.

-- The answer to life, the universe and everything is .........42!

wow…. stunning work, the figure of the grain, the inlay or the dovetails hard to pick wich i like best, as a beinner your work gives me ispiration

-- the journy of a thousand miles begins with a single step " Lou-Tzu"

Great Box, inlays and dovetails. A beautiful job.

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

Another beautiful project, lucky Mother in law.

-- Ron, Twain Harte, Ca. Portable on site Sawmill Service http://westcoastlands.net/Sawmill.html http://westcoastlands.net/SawBucks2/phpBB3

Hey all,

Just uploaded some pictures to Flickr. Lets see if I can embed some here.

This is the overlapping of the inlay grooves that I was talking about.

All of the box photos can be found here. http://flickr.com/photos/johnclanton/sets/72157603668863029/

-- The answer to life, the universe and everything is .........42!