Router-Based Inlay
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Create with confidence.
How do you take a simple project
from drab to fab?
Inlay baby, inlay.
Now just about any project
can be kicked up a few notches
by adding some sort of a decorative inlay.
This shaker table is beautiful.
Very elegantly designed.
It's a classic, classic design that looks great
but it's a simple cherry table
and I think it could really use
a little bit of an adornment on the top.
A freehand router inlay is a great way to do that.
I'm thinking about putting a very simple leaf design
toward one of the corners
just to kick it up a notch.
That's pretty much what we're gonna focus on today
is the process of doing that.
First, I'd like to take a little trip down memory lane
and show you one of my very early projects
that I made for Nicole
that I did my first inlay on.
Let's check it out.
All right, so here it is.
Never before seen.
I don't think I've shown any pictures of this to anybody,
I've never posted any information about this project
because it was pretty early in my woodworking career
that I made this for Nicole.
Very simple jewelry box.
Two doors on the front that open
to reveal a set of drawers on the inside.
The drawers, this was actually Nicole's idea
to come up with a design that's repeated
only twice even though there's four drawers.
The two drawers together make the circular design
but each drawer has a half circle on it.
Let's see.
Dovetailed on the sides.
Simple wooden runners.
Really nothing too tricky as far as this stuff goes.
Knife hinges.
First time I ever installed those,
and it came out pretty nice.
The inspiration other than Nicole,
the inspiration for this project was
the inlay on the front.
I had taken a class with David Marks,
in fact, it was the first time
that I had met David beyond meeting him at a show.
I took a class with him on inlay
which by the way he still does teach that class
in his shop in Santa Rosa.
I'll put a link in the show notes if you're interested
and you're in the Northern California area.
I highly recommend you take it.
He does a marquetry
and router-based inlay class that's fantastic.
That was the class that I took with him.
As part of the class,
I basically built this little leaf here in the front
and you can see on the other door here
is where I practiced the first time.
I came home with this little practice board
with this really nicely figured maple on the front
and my practice inlay,
and I figured, you know what
I want to do something with this.
I don't know what to do
but I want to do something.
I figured let me cut that piece,
my practice board in half.
I can make two doors
and then the idea just came to me.
Maybe I should build a jewelry box out of this,
and since this inlay was so representative
of my path as a woodworker just starting
I thought it would be great to build something for Nicole
that kind of captures the essence
of that time in my life.
Here's the project.
In true woodworker fashion
before I go into detail on this inlay
I want to show you all the flaws
because that's always fun.
First of all in the back here
you could see the biscuit that I cut through.
Apparently you see that's what happens
when you don't pay attention
to where you place your biscuits
on a glue up like this.
The biscuit is showing here.
Now because this was originally intended to be
a prototype for a design
which I did make a second version of this
that came out quite a bit nicer
but just doesn't have the story to it,
look at what I did with the top here.
That's one of the major flaws.
The other thing is of course these doors
are now not closing all the way.
I think maybe a little bit of expansion,
maybe my hinges weren't installed properly
but that actually, I can probably fix that
if I really wanted to.
Of course, I was very new to dovetails
and a dovetail jig
so there's a few gaps here,
but when you have such a dark wood
combined with such a lighter color wood
those gaps are much less noticeable.
That's a nice little trick if you're early
in your woodworking career
and you want things to look nicer than they really do.
Combine dark and light woods.
It works miracles.
The inlay itself consists of about
seven pieces of material.
There's two pieces for each leaf
and the stem is constructed of three separate pieces.
I believe the stem was wenge
and if I'm not mistaken this was olive wood.
I can't 100% remember that but I'm pretty sure.
Really the process of creating this inlay
is a matter of understanding which pieces
get put in first,
because each one of these pieces
is placed in separately.
You have to determine what the order
of that placement is
in order to get the design to look
the way you want it to look.
We're gonna do something very similar to this today.
Just a very nice, simple inlay that we ...
You don't want to over complicate it at first.
You want to keep it simple to ensure success
and you could always build upon it as time goes on
and your next inlay can be that much more complex.
Let's dig right into it.
To create decorative inlay,
to put it in the simplest term as possible,
all you really need to do
is cut a particular shape out
in some sort of a figured wood
or whatever wood you want it to be made out of.
You could see I've got quite a collection here
of different things.
I cut this to about 1/8 of an inch thick.
Maybe a little bit less.
You cut your image out in this material
and then you route the substrate, your tabletop
or whatever it is that you want to put that inlay into.
You route the recess and you pop that piece in.
We'll get into the entire process
but really it starts with a drawing.
You could have ...
I've got a bunch of different books with artwork in it,
with natural pictures of leaves and trees
and things like that,
and I use those to get my basic images.
I'm not that great of an artist.
I can't draw things to save my life.
I like to really copy images that I see.
I've even gone to the extent
of finding a picture on the web,
taking a piece of tracing paper
and putting it up on my monitor
to get a basic shape of a flower.
In fact, that's what I did with my inlaid hall table.
I had this really interesting picture of a flower here
that I wasn't really sure how to draw freehand.
I just took it right off of the screen.
That's the idea.
You need to start with a picture
but keep in mind, it has to be relatively simple.
Because with this type of inlaying
you don't really have the ability to get too detailed.
We're limited by the size of our router bits
and the smallest router bit I have is about 1/16 of an inch
so you can't get all that much detail
and you don't have nearly as much control
as you do with something like let's say marquetry.
What you have to do is let the wood speak for itself.
Let the wood's grain be
what really jazzes this thing up
and takes it to the next level.
Picking the type of material to use in your project
is absolutely crucial to your success.
Once you have your master picture
and whether that is the book itself.
A book that a has a photograph in it or something,
or you've draw something on a piece of paper for yourself,
you want to create what you're gonna call
your master tracing.
Get a piece of tracing paper
and take your original design
and then make sure you get a nice,
accurate tracing of that picture.
This is what we're going to use to transfer
these designs to our workpiece.
I could see what I've got here
is a very simple leaf design
and that's the one that we're gonna use
for this project.
This is a leaf and stem design that I used on,
well in fact, I used it on the second
version of that jewelry box that I made
which was actually for a customer.
Things are a little bit more refined,
a little bit cleaner.
You'll notice the design really is very simple.
It consists of a stem and two leaves.
Each leaf is consisting of basically two pieces
and what we need to do right now
is determine how these pieces overlap
because whatever is in the background
has to be inlaid first,
and then everything else gets inlaid on top of it.
You could see this leaf here is in the background
but this leaf is in the foreground.
This one has to go in first
and then we'll put this one on top of it.
The stem can go, it's up to you.
The stem can go first, it can go last.
Depending on how you want the stem
to work into these pieces of the leaf material,
but that's kind of flexible as far as I'm concerned.
Now we know this piece needs to go in first.
What I like to do is label each piece of wood
with a number that tells me
which one is gonna go first.
I'm gonna start on the outside here,
that's piece number one, it's piece number two,
piece number three,
and piece number four.
We'll start by doing this little moon shape piece here.
We'll drop this guy right on top of it
then we'll come in with this piece third,
this piece fourth,
and again, the stem can either actually be number one
or number five in this case.
I think what I'd like to see is the inlay
somewhere in the bottom right corner,
toward the front of the table.
Right there it looks pretty good.
What I want to do is create reference marks
because you're gonna have to transfer the design
to the table a couple different times.
It's nice to have reference marks
outside of the drawing
that will help you place this
in the proper location later.
I'm gonna start by taping the corner here
with some blue tape.
It doesn't really need to be anything more than that.
I just want to make sure that the piece
goes back in the same position
after I put the carbon paper on in here.
Carbon paper believe it or not,
yes, they still make it.
You might get some funny looks
when you go into a store and ask for it though.
Put some carbon paper under your tracing
and we're gonna use that to transfer the image.
Nothing tricky here.
Just start going around.
Now here's the reason for those reference marks.
I'm gonna transfer those
to the workpiece as well.
Because I can't work with this piece of paper here.
I'm gonna have to take this paper off.
The next time I need to put the paper back
to trace my drawing on again,
I now have this marks here
that show me exactly where this piece goes
and then I could tape it back down
and put the image back in place.
Now we're gonna take our tracing
and we're going to use our inlay material
and draw these individual shapes
onto the inlay material.
Before we do that
it's important to understand this concept of overlapping.
Wherever the pieces overlap
we have to sort of be careful
with how we put them together.
You see the seam right here in the middle,
if I just cut this piece perfectly to this shape
and then this piece perfectly to this shape,
we are making a lot of extra work for ourselves
and hoping that this seam is gonna be nice and tight
between these two pieces.
We have an advantage
that we're putting these things
in one piece at a time.
What I'm gonna do is this first piece that goes in
where the side that it meets another piece
is actually gonna get cut
just a little bit over sized,
so that I could put that piece in,
flush everything down
and then come with the next piece
and put it over top.
That second piece will then overlap
some of that material that we put in that first piece
and give us a nice tight seam
between these two pieces.
Again, it will make a lot more sense
as we move forward.
If that's a little bit confusing right now
don't worry about it
but just understand that I'll be cutting my pieces
slightly over sized on this side
where they meet another piece.
Before I assign pieces of wood
to each of these individual leaf parts,
I want to draw in some lines
that will sort of give me an idea
of what the grain direction should be
because this is a leaf, right?
If this were a natural leaf,
the grain direction would go at
sort of a 45-degree angle to the center
part of the leaf here.
The vein or where the two halves meet.
It's important to get these on there
because they're gonna serve as reference points.
One of the great things about using tracing paper
is the fact that you could see through it.
You can see I've already cut some leaf parts
out of this piece.
You can move it around until that grain matches up
just where you want it to.
Here's a piece of zebrawood.
That's a great leaf material.
This is a piece of I believe this is canarywood.
That's another great piece for these nice veins
that will be great for a leaf.
If you want to do something more subtle,
of course you've got things like walnut.
You want to be a little bit more loud.
You've got stuff like Padauk here,
some mahogany to be a little bit more reserved.
I think I'm gonna go with probably the zebrawood.
I don't know.
It's a tough choice.
This cherry is gonna get darker over time
and I think the zebrawood is gonna standout
a little bit more.
The cherry will probably get closer in color
to this piece of canarywood
and it will make this a little bit less noticeable.
I think I'll stick with the zebrawood for this one.
I'm only worried about piece number one right now.
I'm gonna take this to the wood
and I'm just gonna move it around.
You can see the grain in the zebra wood
is vertical here.
I'm gonna turn it until it matches up.
That's not too bad.
You could see I've got this dark streak.
If you think somewhere in this leaf
there would naturally be something dark.
Maybe here at the base.
Maybe even here at the tip
you would have a dark spot.
Along this line in the center.
You could use this piece
to sort of paint that leaf on.
Whatever way you think it should be done.
For me I think I'm gonna let some of that
darker color come into the bottom of my leaf here.
Just to keep things from moving around.
A little piece of tape.
Just insert the carbon paper.
Trace leaf number one.
Remember I mentioned the overlap.
If I cut this piece directly to the this line
and then try to match my other piece
up directly to that line.
It's gonna be very difficult to do.
I do want to overlap.
Instead of cutting directly to my line,
I'm over sizing this piece
by just a little bit.
It doesn't really matter.
I can freehand that
because the second piece is gonna come in
and overlap right on top of that.
If this edge is a little wacky
it's not that big of a deal.
Without a doubt the best tool
for getting these pieces cut out
is a scroll saw.
Unfortunately with my smaller shop setup,
the scroll saw's in storage right now.
I could go get it
but I think I can accomplish these cuts
using my bandsaw and a quarter inch blade.
You just want to make sure that you don't
get too close with your fingers
and you have a nice controlled cut.
The thing is if you get more complex with your design
and those pieces get skinnier and skinnier
you're absolutely gonna have to use a scroll saw to do it
or if you want to do it by hand
a fretsaw or coping saw will get the job done too.
For these pieces they're pretty big
and there's not really any intricate curves
that we have to worry about.
I should be able to do it with the bandsaw.
(lively country music)
If the surface is a little bit ratty
don't even think twice about it.
Just use a little bit of sandpaper
and just kind of smooth it out a little bit.
Okay, it's not absolutely critical
that this be a perfect curve
because this is supposed to be a leaf, right?
If it's a little bit off that's okay.
What you don't want
is a bunch of cut ridges and mill marks
from your saw.
That's why it's important
if you do use something like the bandsaw like I did
that you get rid of all the little frayed edges
and you smooth that curve out a little bit.
One way to do that is with a sandpaper like this.
Just kind of roll it across.
Now we need to attach our inlay piece
to the substrate itself in the right location.
We're gonna use double stick tape to do it.
This stuff you guys hear me talk about this a lot.
This is sold as Turner's tape
and I found it at Woodcraft and Rockler.
Both under that name, Turner's Tape.
It's very thin and incredibly sticky.
It's great for something like this.
I'm basically just gonna take a small piece
of Turner's Tape but one that's big enough
to cover the full length of a piece
and attach the double stick tape.
A little finger pressure is really all you need.
Now I'm just gonna use an X-Acto knife
to trace around the piece of inlay.
Because I really want to cut away all that excess tape.
This will give us a nice custom sized
piece of double stick tape here.
Now I just peel off the ...
I'll use my fingernail to make sure
it's firmly attached to the back of the inlay.
We don't want that to come off.
Peel off the paper backing.
Now I can drop it in place.
I'm going to align it
with the outside of the leaf.
Not to worried about the inside.
That's pretty good.
This isn't going anywhere and this is good
because what we need to do
is take a very, very sharp,
brand new X-Acto knife
and we're gong to trace around the outside
of this piece.
I usually start by taking nice,
light scoring cuts.
Just lightly sever the grain.
If you push too hard at first
you could trail of in some unusual direction
that would really, really mess things up.
Take your time and once that groove is established
you could start to press down a little bit harder.
I am trying to keep my blade close to vertical here.
I may give it a slight angle
but I'm trying to stay as close to vertical as I can.
Just take your time
and trace around.
Patience pays off here.
These corners are probably the trickiest part
so I just take a series of small little cuts like this
as I work my way around the corner.
Until they all connect.
Once you're pretty confident
that you've got a nice tracing
all the way around the perimeter.
You really only get one shot at this
so make sure it's good.
Take a nice thin putty knife
and just very carefully, very patiently
start to wiggle the knife underneath.
You do not want to crack this
and especially in these areas here
where the grain is running this way
and you've got these little tiny pieces.
It's incredibly easy to split that.
You could see it doesn't take a whole lot
to loosen it up.
Just take your time again.
Inlay is not a sport for the impatient.
All these extra pencil lines
and everything that are here
can only serve to confuse you.
What I recommend doing is taking a pencil.
Tracing in to the groove
that you've already cut with your knife.
I'm gonna get some pencil dust down in there.
Then come back with your eraser
and go across your line.
Don't go with it, go across it.
We're gonna drive pencil shavings or pencil dust
and the shavings from the eraser down into that groove
and that's gonna help darken it for us.
You don't have to erase the entire image.
You could see with the pencil gone
we've got a nice accurate line
showing us exactly where this piece is gonna go.
Now we need to make a recess in the surface
following our tracing line that we just made
that this little piece can pop right into.
First thing you need to know
is that the depth of that hole
is actually gonna be just a little bit shallower
than the thickness of this work piece.
When this drops in we want it to sit a little bit
proud of the surface
and then we can use a scraper or something
to smooth it all out
and make it level with the rest of the surface.
The other thing we need to do
is consider what tool we're going to use
to make that recess.
For me there is nothing better
than just a standard router
and a couple of straight router bits.
There are other options out there.
I've got one of these Foredom kits
that's basically like a high powered dremel.
You could certainly use a dremel
and you can also use a laminate trimmer.
The feedback that I've gotten from people who do this
and also my experience with these lighter tools
is that the lighter that tool is
the harder it is to keep that bit tracking
the way you want it to.
A really light base like this
doesn't really resist the motion of the grain.
If the grain wants to pull that bit
in a certain direction,
it's very difficult to stop it using that tool.
Some people have had great success with it
so I can't knock it,
but for me personally,
the heft and the weight of a standard full sized router
is really the way to go
because then I can just grab hold of the base
and move it around
and it's not gonna go anywhere
unless I want it to.
I really have to deliberately push it
in a particular direction for it to go there.
The secret here for using a tool like this
is all in the router bits.
I have two very, very small bits here.
I've got one that's an 1/8 of an inch
and the other is a 1/16.
Now these bits are great for this
because the 1/8 inch one
can hog out the bulk of the material
getting pretty close to the line.
The 1/16 is what I'm gonna use
to really just kiss that surface
and very carefully get to my line.
You can have two routers set up
or you could change the setup in between
and switch from bit to bit,
whatever you're comfortable with.
The big router is the way
that we're gonna go with this.
We're going old school on this one.
What I've got here is a very bad illustration
showing essentially the groove that we've made
with our X-Acto knife.
What you would see if you took a little cross section is
that we have created somewhat of a V groove notch
all the way around the workpiece.
Here's what you're looking for
and I will be using magnifying lenses
to watch this as I'm doing my routing.
The router bit comes along this way
and as it approaches this V groove
the bit starts to create this little frayed edges
at the top as the wood kind of tears out a little bit.
It's very, very small but they're there.
You'll see these little fuzzies as you go.
At this point,
there's no more material here.
The fuzzies just kind of pop off
and once you see that happen
you know you are in the zone
where you need to stop.
As soon as those frayed edges disappear
you know you have maybe one more pass at best
to remove these little bit of material of that V groove.
We're looking for those frayed edges to disappear.
Once they're gone maybe one more slight pass.
If you're being daring you might just stop right there
and call it done.
That is what I'm looking for as I'm routing
and unfortunately my camera and setup
is probably not gonna be able to show you that detail
but this is a pretty good illustration
of what you're looking for.
Here's how I set the router depth.
First of all I plunge the bit.
Plunge the whole router down
until it contacts the bench like that.
That's the zero point.
Then I use the work piece itself
with the plunge bar mechanism here.
Put it between the plunge bar and the stop
and lock it down.
What that would do is give us a recess
that's exactly the thickness of our workpiece.
Remember I said I want the workpiece
to stand a little bit proud,
which means I need to bring this bar up
just a smidgeon, whatever a smidgeon might be.
A 32nd and 64th.
What I'm gonna do is use my built-in meter here.
Now this is metric but it really doesn't matter.
I'm gonna bring it up maybe
a millimeter, maybe a half a millimeter.
Now much at all.
Then loosen the plunge bar
and I let it drop down
to the point that it catches.
That's one more millimeter or half
and notice that my workpiece doesn't fit anymore.
That's perfect.
My router is all set and ready to go.
My workpiece is clamped to the workbench.
We want to make sure that it doesn't move at all
and you can use eye protection for this
but to be completely honest with you,
I don't usually do that
because the eye protection in addition
to my magnifying headset,
distorts my vision too much.
I can't see exactly what I'm doing.
This is one of those times
that I take a little bit of a calculated risk
by not having complete solid eye protection.
What I've got is this.
You do have to be careful.
Be very cautious with it.
I'm gonna have to recommend
that you do use eye protection
but you're gonna see me
breaking my own recommendation
because I'm not going to.
Sometimes in woodworking
when you're doing these things
you can't always be as safe as you want to on paper.
Sometimes for the sake of getting the better result
you do have to make a sacrifice somewhere
and take a calculated risk.
Just be careful.
Don't do anything stupid and you should be okay.
This is one of those interesting times in woodworking
that I arrive at sort of this zen moment.
This connection with the work
that is kind of hard to describe.
A lot of hand tool users have it
and they think that it's a very relaxing,
almost you're planing a board down
and you get into this bit of a trance.
For me it happens when I close off outside stimulation
and I'm only focused on this workpiece.
It happens because the router is loud
and what I wind up doing is
throwing on some headphones.
I'll even use my noise cancelling headphones
and put on some great music,
and I just get so in the zone of what I'm doing
that it's incredibly relaxing,
and something like this
doesn't have to be very tricky.
It's got a lot of parts to the process
but it can be a relaxing and fun experience.
That's what I recommend doing.
Throw on some headphones,
crank up some good tunes.
In fact, you know what?
Let's get started.
(reggae music)
Now I've gone about as far as I can go
up on this corner here with the router bit.
What I'm gonna use is an X-Acto knife
just to kind of slowly but surely
chisel that corner away.
If you have a fine set of chisels that will do this
that's fine too.
Sometimes these points are just
a little bit too severe.
Take your time.
Slowly but surely work your way back.
That's pretty good.
Let's do a test fit.
I'll be honest with you,
no matter how good you are,
you are likely to have to do some rework here.
It's almost impossible to get this perfect
on the first shot
or maybe even the second shot.
You basically get it as close as you can.
Try to find the areas that are the offending spots
and if you see something that looks a little tight there
just go back and try and scrape,
but what you want to do
is scrape on a bit of an angle this way
so you're cleaning out material from the bottom
and you're not really touching this top borderline.
If you do, if you touch that top borderline
you will actually create gaps
and we don't want that.
If it's really, really close
and you just can't figure out exactly
where the offending area is,
the easiest thing I find to do is to taper
and start to use a little bit of sanding.
Maybe a file or something
and just kind of give yourself
a little bit of a tapered edge there toward the bottom,
and essentially what you're gonna do now
is create a wedge.
Now at this point
this piece is almost going in.
I know that if I push it any more
it's gonna wedge itself in there
and I'm not gonna be able to get it out.
That is close enough
and the next thing to do is to put glue in there
and pound it down with a mallet
and make sure it sits perfectly all the way down.
You have an option at this point though.
You could add a little bit more
of visual interest in a decor development
if you just sort of burn the inside corners here
using a technique called sand shading.
I'll show you how that's done now.
Sand shading is literally using playground sand
or any type of sand.
Something nice and fine grained like this.
I've had it in that old pot
and I put it on a hotplate
and you put the wood inside there
and it actually chars the surface.
What we're trying to do is introduce
a little bit of a color gradient
where it gets darker toward the edge
and it's a very effective way to create a shadow line.
When two pieces of the zebrawood
butt up against each other,
that joint if it's nice and tight
is relatively uninteresting.
The only thing that tells you
that it is two pieces of wood
is that the grain is changing direction.
Imagine if where those two pieces meet in the middle
we can actually get a little color there
that dissipates as it gets closer
to the middle of this piece,
and that's what sand shading here does.
What you're gonna need like I said is the hotplate,
some sand and a little pot like this.
You want to warm it up pretty good.
Just bury it down a little bit
and you're probably gonna have to play
with the heat settings on this
because you don't want it to burn too quickly
and you never leave this unattended.
You turn your back on this thing.
It's gonna wind up burning on you.
If you've given it a few minutes and you come back
you don't really see anything.
You may want to turn the heat up just a little bit.
I'm pretty happy with that.
Now I'm just gonna get
a little bit of color on the other side.
Not much.
I'm just gonna touch this center point
as low as I can just to give it
a little hint of color at that far edge.
That looks pretty good.
Looks a little bit drastic
but trust me it will clean up real nice.
Don't forget turn off your hotplate.
One thing to keep in mind is
the treatment that we just gave this piece of wood
was high dry heat.
What's that gonna do?
It's gonna drive any last bit of moisture
that was in this piece right out
and it's gonna cause it to shrink a little bit.
You may find that the piece
that was tight fitting before
now just drops in perfectly.
What I like to do in this case.
If it's a little bit too loose
I want to bring some moisture bac
k to this workpiece
because it's inaccurate.
The ambient moisture that was in that piece
dictated a certain size before
and by driving the moisture out,
we actually made it smaller.
I just like to spray it with a little bit of water
and let it sit for a couple minutes
to help introduce some moisture back into it.
Just make sure it dries thoroughly
before you put it back in.
All right, now we just add a little bit of glue
into the recess.
Spread it around thoroughly.
Make sure you get it up on the edges there.
We drop it in place very carefully
because when it's charred like this
it becomes more brittle
so you have to be real careful with it.
Pretty close.
Some light taps with the dead blow
and drop it down.
(tapping)
This may seem a little bit odd
but what I'm gonna do is sand
the workpiece a little bit.
Basically I'm gonna create
a little sawdust slurry
with some of the glue that's squeezing out.
You see how it's pulling up.
The sand is mixing with the glue
and it's creating a little bit of a paste
toward the outside.
If you have some gaps to contend with
that's what you want.
Let me just take my finger
and take some of this sawdust glue
paste that we've created.
It looks terrible and messy now but trust me,
it will look fine.
I don't have much squeeze out here to worry about.
I'm just using a block with some blue tape on it.
You could use some packing tape.
Basically you just want something
that the glue really isn't gonna grip to
and you want to make sure that the glue
doesn't get to the wood,
because that wouldn't be good if it's stuck.
While the first piece dries in the clamp,
we could start cutting out our second piece.
Now we're tracing on number two.
That's this guy right here.
Remember number two is behind number three
and you notice, number two actually stops right here
and the line for number three starts
and then number two resumes again right there.
We're gonna pretend that this leaf isn't here.
We need to draw at least some semblance
of what that leaf would have looked like
if this piece wasn't in front of it.
Even though the line stops here
I'm going to continue across.
It comes back out and meets the bottom.
Now in a subsequent step,
this little piece of material here
is gonna get covered by piece number three,
but that's okay.
We're building layer upon layer
to create that sense of depth.
You could see piece number two coming to life.
Cut this out of the bandsaw again.
it's been several hours now
so we can see how we did.
Looks pretty good.
Let's scrape it so it's nice and clean.
Level it with the surface.
Now we'll get a real good idea of how we've done.
All right and as we start to clean it up
you could see it reveals a nice light center,
a dark tip down here,
a little dark area down there
and a little color on the edges.
Just adds a visual interest
that you simply can't get from the raw piece.
Big difference there.
Now to drop in piece number two
we need to know exactly where to locate it.
I suppose we could just line it up
and take our best guess
but let's do it the proper way.
We've got our index marks
in a few different locations here.
This will show you exactly why
we needed those in the first place.
Just line up the cross hairs.
Okay.
Now we know we're pretty much
in the exact same position
we were at the very first time.
Come back through with our carbon paper
and let's draw on piece number two again.
Now this piece will go right on top like so.
Hopefully you can see here what we've done.
You see this line right there.
Now when we create this recess
we're gonna have a nice crisp line
that's going to join these two pieces.
As the same deal as before, double stick tape.
And once again, we very carefully
drop this in the proper location.
Another thing I wanted to tell you before I jump into
routing this second part of the leaf is
this is one of the few times
you will ever see me let go
of the handles of the router.
Once this thing starts spinning I lock the trigger on
so that it doesn't turn off by itself
and then I'll grab the base with both hands
so it's fully secure
but it's just a little bit weird the first time you do it
because normally you never let go of those handles.
I plunge down, get it into position
and then the whole time I'm down like this
looking at the work as I'm going through.
This is the one time we're breaking some of the rules
that normally we never even think about breaking,
and letting go of the handles is one of those things
with the router.
In this case,
this just does not give me nearly as much control
as when my palms are resting on the base
and on the workpiece at the same time.
For the stem piece you want to use a dark wood.
Walnut works well
but I find that wenge has that nice,
very barky, woody look to it
that looks very natural to me.
I'm just gonna use this little strip of wenge.
Same exact process in terms of
using the tracing paper and the carbon sheet there,
but the one problem is it's gonna be hard to see this
because it's pencil on a brown surface.
I can't show it to you on camera,
it's not gonna come out very well
but if you just trace it with your pencil it's fine
and remember if the surface is a little bit jagged,
how many stems have you ever seen
that are perfectly smooth?
A lot of times they have those little
branch outs on them and little knobs on them.
There's nothing wrong with a stem
that looks a little bit jagged like that.
Do the best you can,
cut out the rough shape
and you should be good to go.
Without a doubt this is going to be
the hardest one to fit,
and even when you are pretty darn close
it's still gonna give you some trouble in some areas.
Usually what I wind up doing is taking a scraper
and relieving the back end.
We're using sandpaper to do this
just to create that little bevel like we did before.
You just don't want to go too far
because you could very easily loosen the fit
without realizing it.
At some point here you may be tempted
and I certainly am to do what is like
basically a leap of faith.
By putting glue in here.
Putting this right in position
and very carefully tapping down
with a block over top.
What you're gonna do is force it down into place.
Give it a nice tight fit.
The risky run here is if there's any wood
that's really in the way
that you shouldn't have done this to,
you could easily snap part of the stem.
But again, that's why it's called a leap of faith.
I'm pretty confident that it's gonna go in
with no problem and we're gonna go for it.
No guts no glory I guess, right?
You really do want to make sure
that you relieved enough material
that it will wedge itself in place
and not just break
because at this point breakage would be
pretty much disaster.
Okay with block.
A couple hits with the hammer.
And it's in.
I do have a little bit of a gap
right in here behind the stem
and right in the middle there.
I've got some dust in the way.
There's a little hairline gap there.
What you can do for that is
very similar to what we did before.
A lot of variation to how you can handle these things.
I'm gonna create some sawdust.
Make sure it's kind of packed down in that area there
and grab a little bit of thin CA glue.
Drip it on the surface.
Any place you think you might have a gap.
Essentially the CA glue absorbs into the wood dust
and fills those holes
with the appropriate color of material.
Just a final scraping here
just to clean off any excess glue.
Make sure it's nice and flat level with the surface.
If you want to see it really come to life
we'll hit it with a little mineral spirits.
Not bad, huh?
I don't know if the shakers would approve
of an inlay on top of one of their tables
but I sure like it.