Easy Inlays with Lightburn and diode laser

As I said in my previous post, my brother turns 75 years young soon and I’ve decided to build him a box similar to the Christmas boxes I’ve shown previously.

I planked out a couple of small catalpa limbs harvested from trees on my property with my bandsaw and then used the cutting scheme I shared in my last post to laser cut all the box sides and ends with my Atezr L2 36W laser machine. I used my tablesaw to cut the top and bottom (could have used the laser) because I chose to also rabbet the lid to make it one piece vs two.

It’s also been a while since I’ve done my “easy inlays” and engraving. I had to do quite a refresher course to figure out the inlay process and Lightburn all over again.

Pocket and black walnut inlay pieces are laser cut…

Glued up…

Sawn off and sanded… catalpa with black walnut inlay.

So, the box is assembled pretty much as I’ve previously described and a couple of engravings are added… before sanding and finishing. Catalpa, though fairly soft, is actually quite attractive IMO…

That was a fun project. I also learned that catalpa laser cuts beautifully. Hopefully I stay motivated for a while and can do some more of this. It’s amazing how quickly I forget stuff… I had to really study hard what I had previously done with those inlays.

Later.

– David

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