Rescources for inlay and decoration

[Marc Himes]

I have been turning for about 6mo. My wife is very interested in working on projects with me and would like to learn about techniques for inlay as a way to decorate some of my turnings. What are some resources we can use to learn more? Thanks for your input.

 

[John Taylor]

Inlay Ideas

Marc,
I have been turning for about 10 years on and off. I'm just now playing with inlay ideas. Look at The stone inlay work by Steve Hatcher and many others. My first attempt at turquose was a near disaster. I made the grove too deep and had only managed to produce a hard CA glue dome over loose stone and a pool of liqued CA glue. I turned on the lathe and startee to sand/cut the dome down and the next thing I knew I has $12 of fine shrapnell and A glue spider webs al over.

Some people are inlaying different colored wood dust, colored epoxy and even small objects into clear 2 part epoxy. TRy cutting a wide grove into the rim of a bowl, paint the sides and bottom. Glue in objects, like cross sections of natural shelll and fill the void with clear epoxy. The colored bottom seems to give the inlay a real pool like depth. I just fell in love with a peice made like that in Pasadena. There are several comercial products like inlace and all their addatives.

Another good choice for inlay is metals look for free brass filings might be the catch bin at your local hardware's key machine.

For more ideas, come to the next AAW symposium and brouse the instant gallery you will be amazed. It will take me all year to just experiment with what's listed here.

John Taylor

 

[john lucas]

Most of the inlay techniques that I use require the wood to be re-turned on the lathe after the inlay in applied. You might be interested in techniques that can be done off the lathe so your wife can work on the project while you work on another one. There are a lot of techniques for this including pyrography, carving, painting, texturing etc. I just did a demo for our club on surface decoration. I think they really enjoyed it. I don't have anything written on this subject yet because it's kind of a new demo for me. I have spent years learning all I can about surface decoration. It's a lot of fun and I think the sky is the limit.

 

[Ed Davidson]

Here's a link to a little inlaying tutorial I put together a while back, aimed at penturners, but the techniques described will work on any kind of turning:Inlay turning

 

[quartlow]

Another good inlay material is embosing ink, its in a powder form and can be used like YOYOspin explains in his link. lots of great color selections. I've also mixed it with epoxy to fill larger voids.

You can also inlay with woods if you keep it simple I did both the bowl and these lamps by inlaying walnut plugs after getting my trunings almost to size.