This one (Cutting board with bird inlay (purple heart, black walnut, maple)) took a few hours. Cutting the wood, planing and gluing always stretches over a few days, because the glue has to dry. Sanding and the inlays take the longest, because sanding is just tedious with hardwood and takes ages, with the inlays there are always problems. Now that I’ve fixed my Z issue and Estlcam 12 has been updated to do carves correctly, it isn’t going to take too much time either though. You can find a complete walkthrough of one of my last boards here:
I am also still working on a guide on how to do those deep inlays with Estlcam. I’ve recorded it three times now because I always mess something up… Won’t be long though… cough
I would never use your cutting boards. Too pretty. What a terrible gift. (just joking, those are awesome). I just bought some additional V-bits, looking forward to the deep inlay video!
I just let my large cutting board sit on one of the fat edges. It hasn’t fallen over yet, but I should look at making something like this for it in the future.
I only made the one cutting board. Those take a lot of work!
The first one took a lot longer, but I just do them every now and then in between. The single steps don’t take too long so I can do them in between. The inlays take long though.
Thanks for the video! I’ll be trying some inlays tomorrow and will take some tips from you for sure. One question though, aside from being easier to clamp, more re-surfaceable after use, and more surface area for glue up (okay, those are pretty good reasons); why else do a deep inlay? Seems like you could only go down 2-3 mm and hog out with a flat bit for the majority of the cut, then do the v-bit around the edges like with smaller ones. Less time to mill and less of cam setup.
I do shallow inlays for basically everything but for cutting boards. The problem is that shallow inlays are going to pop out/break when cutting on them (mechanical force and all), this is not going to happen when they are that deep so the hassle is somehow necessary in that case.
If you want to do a shallow inlay, like for my unicorn pencil-case, you can just make the hole 3mm (or 2mm) and the plug a DOC of 1mm and starting depth 2.5mm (or 1.5mm), you then have an inlay that is not going to come out any time soon. You could also do a smaller gap for glue, but if you are clearing small parts with a V-bit, even with 2% stepover, there will be areas where it is not as flat as you’d like it to be. So better be safe than sorry.
I improved the stand and added rubber feet. There is a slot that is marginally larger at the top and a TPU foot you just push in. Holds really tight without glue.
There are a few more things I have to improve before publishing the next version.
Nice work, and may I suggest the addition of a small chamfer around the perimeters would finish it off nicely? I know this is a CNC forum and all but you might find a pattern following chamfer bit will do that job much quicker than having to set up both sides and flip.
That might involve making the slots for the mortices a little wider so that the bearing fits in them!