Baptism Cross

[joe]

My cousin had a baptism for their daughter, and I needed a gift. It’s a good thing I have a laser! But what to make. I remembered awhile back, some bad influences did some really nice work with crushed Mother of Pearl inlays.

Flake Mother of Pearl inlay

Proving a concept, one Saturday afternoon. @ianauch inspired project. This thread. Nacre is the mineral, lining the shells of Mollusks, it’s what a pearl is made of. (on a side note, an Octopus is a mollusk, with roughly the intellect of a cat. That makes it the genius of the family!) ianauch was kind enough to post his source, and I would have it. The stuff is gorgeous. I was admiring it, and it hit me. Snowflakes. I was originally thinking of wood, but the thought of the cool color of blue …

Crushed mother of pearl inlay

I had a lot of fun playing around with some Easy Inlay mother of pearl inlay powder today. This stuff is fantastic. And it is super easy to use. [IMG_E8590] First, I found some a cool stock illustration to start from. But the detail in the anchor was to fine so I needed to thin out the lines a bit and invert the color. I also added a stroke around the anchor to keep a gap between the inlay and the rest of the engrave. [image] [image] I also added a few shapes, the red line in the picture …

But what wood should I use.
Oh, I have that nice Sapele plank.
I can’t cut that with a Glowforge.
But I have a friend with a router table I can borrow!

After some Inkscape designing(with some help from The Noun Project after I realized I can’t draw a dove, even with the help of a computer (Dove Icon - Free PNG & SVG 165472 - Noun Project)), and some trial and error, I had a cross that came out beautifully.

I will make a post in Beyond the Manual with my design and fabrication process.

Edit: Here is the other post! How I made a Baptism Cross

[ptodd]

Nice gift!

[cynd11]

Oooooo, very nice! I tried inlay with crushed turquoise once but it ended up looking like #&@%. Looking forward to your descriptions.

[PrintToLaser]

Great job there Joe! I Love that MOP for inlay. Did you use the UV resin? It sure beats the 5 minute work time of epoxy.

[Jules]

Beautiful! Amazing the detail you can get with that fill!

[ianauch]

Nice that turned out great. The MOP is really fun to work with. And @PrintToLaser is right the UV resin is the way to go. It makes is way easier than epoxy or super glue.

[PrintToLaser]

I was amazed at the at the leisure of the work time. I tis unlimited. You decide when.

[joe]

You and @ianauch are some of the bad influences I was talking about. Now I have to look into UV resin’s.

[PrintToLaser]

Another benefit is it’s fast!

[Facio-Ergo-Sum]

Great work, Joe. Another great technique to add to the glowforge book of recipes