End grain inlay for bowls

[preprius]

Advice wanted

I was thinking on how I could spice up a bowl with symbols. 

Like southwest western Indian symbols. 

Has anyone done this?  

Here is my work in progress.

My bowl board is 3/4" thick.  So if I make a symbols it has to be less than 3/4" tall. 

So my attempt sucked. The top eagle did not fit in bottom at all so I re cut it and have too many gaps.  The white maple should have fit into the black walnut. But did not. I need more practice.

The black walnut actually cracked. Probably due to end grain and only 1/8" spacing. 

The next step is to take this inlay and put into the bowl board. 

So when I cut the rings I will have western symbols.   Yes all rings will have these symbols.  Unless I cut 2 or 3 rings first then put the symbols in the bowl board.   If the bowl is round I could rotate the rings and symbols to any position. 

This inlay concept avoids the symbols across from each other. 

My final test will be on a cowboy hat. Which is not round. 

But I have to get better at this end grain small inlay.   

Discussion is welcome.

Me.

Mark Eason

 

 

[Scrappile]

I helped a turner friend make a bowl, I did the scroll saw work.  This is a segmented bowl, and much larger, but it might give you an idea.

 

[preprius]

@Scrappile 

how large,  diameter, are those scrollsaw animals?  Were they end grain?  Oh were those symbols just glues on, not inlay.   

Sorry for so many questions. 

 

Wow,  that is a really nice project. Good teamwork. 

That does give me the idea that I might not need end grain.  Any thoughts?

 

 

[Scrappile]

The animals I did were cut in 1/8" thick, and they are a little over 1" tall.  Which can be resized if needed.   Of course, the simpler the cut, the smaller it can be. This is a large bowl.  But the concept is very doable.  I would be tempted to fill in over the insets with clear epoxy.  He did not, and really, no need. Just something I thought could be done.

[Dan]

Just curious, but why does it have to be end grain? How big will the bowl be when finished? Most of the bowls I've seen are segmented like what Paul showed.

@scrappile, nice job on the bowls you helped with. I like the idea of filling with epoxy.

[preprius]

 

26 minutes ago, Dan said:

Just curious, but why does it have to be end grain? How big will the bowl be when finished? Most of the bowls I've seen are segmented like what Paul showed.

 

The end grain was my first thought as I duplicate the " board to bowls" concept.  The bowls I was thinking is about 8" diameter. 

But the bowls were just a starting point. The final goal is to put symbols on my wearable cowboy hats.  The wall thickness is 1/8". 

The symbol inlay would have to be inlay in the circle pattern. 

 

Edited April 18 by preprius

[Wichman]

Mark, just spit balling here. What do you use to drill your pilot holes? If you use Seycos scroller drill, the you could think about the following concept:

Cut the bands out for the hat. Attach the pattern to the inside surface. Using the scroller drill, drill the pilot holes. Position the band on the scroll saw so that the top of the band is above the top scroll saw arm. Using small spiral blades, cut out the pattern.

 

I've been thinking about this issue for awhile, but health issues are keeping me from it loop

[preprius]

 

59 minutes ago, Wichman said:

Mark, just spit balling here. What do you use to drill your pilot holes? If you use Seycos scroller drill, the you could think about the following concept:

Cut the bands out for the hat. Attach the pattern to the inside surface. Using the scroller drill, drill the pilot holes. Position the band on the scroll saw so that the top of the band is above the top scroll saw arm. Using small spiral blades, cut out the pattern.

 

I've been thinking about this issue for awhile, but health issues are keeping me from it loop

oooh , interesting.

 

[preprius]

Here is some pics for discussions....

This is quick and dirty experiments using the crappy inlay from before. I installed both symbols facing each other. 

 

The next one shows the rings stacked. 

Everything was falling apart. So I used super glue to finish the experiment.

 

 

it seems a bit complex. But might be doable.   

Am I going down a path of future failures?  Will the symbols fall out with the cold or hot weather.

 

[Dan]

Have you thought about bevel cutting? The pieces would drop right in place with virtually no kerf. May seem like more work but once you get the hang of it it should go pretty quick.

[preprius]

I started out using the wrong blade.   I used a 00 skip blade and set the angle at 0.2 drgrees.   For a 1.5" thick cut the blade was too small and I was pushing too hard.  The Blade broke twice. So I sent a #1 through the same cut. And then got bad results. 

I should go to the #3 and set a 0.9 deg. or a tad less.

I will try again and not be so impatient.  

 

[timelett]

Keep trying and let us know what you come up with, i would like to make a project like that, in the process of cleaning the shop for moving, I discarded a number of memories and well intended failures.