Dahlia Inlay Cutting Board

Inspiration from others...

My colleague, Chris Supiro, was experimenting with using v-bits to create a complex inlay cutting board at the start of the school year. I had been watching his project progress without paying too much attention at first. As he continued to experiment and the project he was working on came together, I began to understand what he was actually attempting to accomplish. Creating highly detailed inlayed patterns of dark walnut into lighter maple cutting boards is exceptional beautiful. Yes, we had already explored using the laser cutter to engrave detailed artwork into the surface of guitars and other cutting boards, but decorating the cutting board with wood inlay is particularly impressive. I decided to dive in and learn alongside Mr. Supiro. The first thing I needed to learn for this project was how to create an end-grain cutting board.

End-grain cutting boards work well for this technique

I hadn't spent much time thinking about the direction of the grain of wood when using the CNC router on previous projects. Mr. Supiro informed me that for this type of engraving with the v-bit having the grain of the wood standing up vertically like blades of grass would allow for the best results. While creating an end-grain cutting board is a bit more work, it also has the dual benefit of being quite beautiful and is more durable / better for keeping chef's knives sharp. Creating an end-grain board requires multiple glue-ups where strips of wood are milled/cut, glued, and clamped at least twice leaving the grain of the wood standing up. Both the main cutting board and the wood that will become the inlay need to be created out of end-grain boards so the v-bit can create the best possible result with the least amount of clean up required before glueing the two parts together.

Learning to use VCarve for this project

Vectric's VCarve is one of the tools I had seen used by other Makerspaces to create tool paths for their CNC router. Having mostly worked with Fusion 360, it was a good challenge to learn a second piece of software that could be used to mill on the CNC. VCarve is also capable of creating tool paths for our CNC plasma cutter, so it was worth learning for that reason as well. It turns out that VCarve isn't hard to get started with. While I still feel much more comfortable using Fusion 360, I now feel like I know my way around VCarve and it has some powerful tools that make creating a cutting board engraved with a v-bit

Experimenting with new techniques

• "Throwing off the hump" concept for prepping inlay boards

• Combo inlay for flowers, date, JE

Mistakes were made and lessons were learned.

• Mistakes/Lessons learned: Overzealous sanding, broken bits, not sanding before VCarving (clean up easier if sanded smooth first)

• Starting again with second board...

Version 2

• Small but thicker board.

• Vertical orientation.

• New location for JE (side) and date up high.

• Much more controlled sanding. Sanded before vCarve made a big difference on clean up after milling.

Future explorations

• Multi-species inlay

  • geometric patterns / mandalas....

  • Dahlias with two colors for flower / stem and leaves (Padauk and walnut inlay into maple)