Mixed Materials Photo Ornament: Inlay demonstration

Started messing around with the ornaments @smcgathyfay posted from Rowmark. Did some with walnut and wasn’t too happy with the design. Kept playing around and ended up with these.

Here is a walnut in walnut inlay. I cut them with different grain directions for contrast to demo. Normally wouldn’t do that because of differential shrinkage. I simply did an offset of .0075 inches in Inkscape to do the center.

Then I decided it would make a nice photo inset with an acrylic front and maple plywood back. These are all press fit. Cut to photo with the Glowforge too to fit inside.

Just to get the stuff posted. Need to clean up char inside the acrylic and neaten things up, but this is the concept at least.

Backing of maple plywood.

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Those are beautiful!

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Nice work! I’m always excited to see inlay, and this piece is charming.

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Looking good!

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Great work again.

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Brilliant.

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You’re doing such amazing things, sir. I greatly enjoy your posts, and your willingness to share so much with us here is most generous. Merry Christmas!

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Pretty! Since this isn’t loadbearing to speak of, you can probably handle any cross-grain shrinkage issues with extra clearance and a few dots of flexible glue, no?

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Gorgeous!