Inlays

[Oryxdesign]

Yes, I use a Dremmel for a router to cut the recesses, although very lightweight and a little flimsy I find this works well especially with the very small cutter. I got Daven to laser cut my leaf shapes when he made the templates, you still have to final shape them to fit and although not really necessary it does save time.

I cut the veneers myself, I'm just using the iron to speed up the glue drying and to push the veneers into place. With the iron you can stretch or shrink the pieces a little for a perfect fit.

I think you'll be fine sat at the ironing board with your inlays.

Daven from this forum was brill by the way, you can get him to cut veneers and templates and he'll post them to you, from memory is was quite cost effective too. If you need to do a design more than once the templates are invaluable.

Si

 

[Chris152]

Thought I'd resurrect this really helpful thread as I'm looking to do straight inlay banding and thinking to get a Proxxon drill/ grinder with a router base for the job.
Can anyone advise what kind of depth/ width of cut such a small tool can make in a single pass in a moderately hard wood with the right bit? I'm thinking maybe 6mm width by 1.5 mm depth?
Thanks
Chris

 

[Mr T]

For straight stringing you can just use a bog standard 1/4" router. Wealden do bits down to 1.5mm.

Chris

 

[Chris152]

For straight stringing you can just use a bog standard 1/4" router. Wealden do bits down to 1.5mm.

Chris

The Proxxon seems to be quite quiet, light and I figure I'm less likely to cut chunks out of myself with it?

 

[custard]

I do quite a lot of stringing work, a good quality router (1mm stringing is where you discover how concentric the chuck is and how smooth is the plunge mechanism!) is perfectly capable of handling straight line stringing or shallow curves.

This is the "moment of truth" when, after about 400 hours of work, I have to cut the groove for 1mm stringing in a desk top. Three sides are straight and the fourth side is curved. One slip and all that work goes in the skip,

I use a router in a track for the straight sections,

And I run the router against a template for the curved sections,

For larger scale jobs you can't beat a router for clean, accurate, and quick results. But once the size of the workpiece reduces you have to use a different strategy. For long grain inlay stringing on legs I generally use a scratch stock. But for cross grain stringing in solid timber, especially smaller solid timber pieces like an occasional table, then I like the pen shaped Veritas stringing cutters, they aren't expensive and do an excellent job of severing cross grain fibres.

Incidentally, for cross grain stringing in solid timber you have to cut 1mm wide cross grain inlay strips, otherwise they'll pop out after a few months. With most cabinet making challenges once you know how it's done then it's not too hard, but cutting 1mm cross grain strips, even when you do know how to do it, is still bloody hard!

 

[cowfoot]

For straight stringing you can just use a bog standard 1/4" router. Wealden do bits down to 1.5mm.

Chris

The Proxxon seems to be quite quiet, light and I figure I'm less likely to cut chunks out of myself with it?

The Proxxon doesn't have a threaded collar, which means you can't use a plunge base.
I've been using a Dremel with the Veritas base, very pleased with it so far.

 

[Chris152]

Thanks for the replies.

I now know what a scratch stock and a stringing cutter are! I like the idea of something hand driven, but am thinking of banding more than stringing, tho I'm sure I'll be wanting to do both - and that veritas stringing cutter looks great. And I have a feeling I could make quite a mess with a hand router plane, so something powered with a fence is probably the way to go.
edit: I forgot to ask, Custard - I was thinking to buy the banding online, and like the look of ebony here http://www.originalmarquetry.co.uk/cate ... ging_1.htm
But now you've said about cross-grain banding I'm not sure I can just buy that?

I didn't know the proxxon can't be used for plunge cuts, that's important. Can you get bits for the dremel to do wider, banding cuts? From what I've seen online you get good visibility with them and the right routing base, but clearly a 1/4" router can be used for lots of other tasks too. Hmmm...

 

[Chris152]

Still wondering about his one.

The banding I want to try (about 6 mm) will run across the grain of a board so needs itself to be cross grain to allow for expansion. Is a solution to getting such banding to buy something like this
http://www.thewoodveneerhub.co.uk/red-t ... cm-x-32cm/
and cutting a 6 mm band across the grain? I'd need to use a couple of those widths to get across the board. They even do sticky-back veneer
http://www.thewoodveneerhub.co.uk/wood- ... ck-veneer/
Has anyone used that/ is it good to use and secure over time?

Thanks.