Valentine gift, but I screwed up kerf, dangit

Sigh. I really studied all the advice about kerf and thought I understood it when designing this dresser valet for the DH, but I clearly still don’t get it. I guess I need one-on-one personal face to face lessons or something.

The bad bits required a lot of wood filler to fix, and I’m afraid if he sneezes the whole thing will collapse.

Lined with Tandy veg-tanned leather.

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It looks wonderful and I’m sure he’ll love it.

Next version will be even better

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I think it looks great!

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I think it looks really nice. I love the design.

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It looks wonderful from here! I have the same problem with Kerf. I’m trying to make small test samples with the actual material early to make sure I’ve got things right. Always takes tweaking to get a great fit.

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It’s beautiful!

  • and I’m with you on the kerf. I thought it made sense and then I tried something and one piece fit beautifully and the rest…not so much :-/
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That is beautiful!

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I think it looks fantastic. If it does fall apart when he sneezes, luckily you can just make him another. :wink:

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Beautiful!!!

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I concur with everyone else that it looks great.

As regards your kerf/no sneezing comment, I have the same problem with something similar but different. I am using Inkscape and the Path to Stroke method of kerf compensation. After much frustration, I discovered that if I overlaid the two kerf-adjusted halves in Inkscape the overlay was imperfect. Therefore, even if the glowforge does exactly as instructed (by exactly I mean absolutely zero error no matter the number of decimal places) you still need to over adjust. This leaves gaps.

This is not an issue when I use the Stroke to Path method on basic geometric shapes. Finger joints, inset ovals, etc… are all perfect. But when I use a complex shape with plenty of concave and convex curves, I wind up with the mismatched overlays.

In my case I’m using a png image I traced, which results in all sorts of Bezier curves. I think if I was able to create it using a bunch of basic shapes joined into something complex I would be alright. But that is just my guess.

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Yeah, that’s what happened! The sun bursts came out pretty good but the scalloped clouds were off in different amounts in different directions.

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I would be proud of results like that if I had made it. Beautiful design. :grinning:

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Thanks! I designed it from scratch.

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Awesome job! I think it looks sneeze worthy…
I know what you mean about kerf though… could drive you batty…

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Love the combination of woods. Great looking tray.

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Still a really gorgeous piece!

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Yep, got to agree with everyone else…it’s gorgeous! (Kerf issues or no.) :smile:

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Looks great. The way a stroke to path gets converted on on a twisty compound path seems like a good question to figure out. You are using Illustrator, right?

I didn’t run into this issue when inlaying letters, but they were pretty small and were not full depth cutouts.

Did you have an issue with the draft of the resulting cuts, with the kerf being wider at the top than at the bottom? This means doing the inlay from the back and the cutout from the front to get a better match?

I haven’t done an a full inlay like this in a while and when I get back to my Glowforge, I’d like to do something like this, using @evansd2’s cool joints.

In any case, I like the design.

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No, I did flip the suns to make the fronts/backs average out. It was the curvy clouds that didn’t match. They were off in multiple directions in a way that’s hard to explain. I guess that particular pattern was a real kerf challenge in ways I don’t understand.

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We are all kerf challenged in our own way!:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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