Started making a pack of inlay band Sunday.  Never made it before, but it came out alright I think, B+ anyway.  Using scraps of beech and walnut because I had it.  Going to do a few more of the same until I get it down and can switch to expensive stuff.

 

About half of it I planed the edge, then ripped a thin strip on the bandsaw, then planed the edge again.  The second half I just ripped so both sides are rough.  Figure it gets planed or scraped down to the host surface anyway.

 

Even though I was expecting it, I was really struck by how cool the shavings are:

 

Now that is cool as heck. Do you have any plans for those bands or just practice at this point, because they sure look like they are better than practice! I'd be proud to have those on something, anything. A+ !

 

Now that is just plain AWESOME! 

 

Perfect glue joints!!

The intent was just practice, but I will keep them around in case I find a project that could use them.  For practice I wasn't worried about length, but these would work well trimming a box or something.  Or I could use them on something larger and also get some practice joining them.

 

The flaws I see are that not all the diamonds line up as well as I would like, some of the glue on the outside line of beech didn't hold, and the thickness of that outside line varies.  Not deal killers of course, just points I would like to improve next time.  I know what caused them of course, so I expect to be able to fix the troubles.

 

All in all, I found making these to be tremendous fun.  This may be a risky rabbit hole to enter!

Well, I mean we are our own worse critics aren't we?  

Probably once they are in a box or something, the typical passerby wouldn't see what you see. I could definitely see a rabbit hole on this. 

I was watching Roy Underhill with a guest making your bands like that, and also some marquetry, I thought man that'd be fun and relaxing to get into.

Well from here in Western Indiana, they sure look impressive to me.

I’m blown away. What’s the process to make those? It’s like watchmaking for woodworkers.

It's not too difficult really.  I followed Steve Latta's method show below.  Of all the ones I've seen, this seems to be the most reliable and efficient to me.

 

The main thing is a really sharp hand plane and using hide glue for the rub joints.  I used it too for the veneered faces and that gave me some trouble, but the whole process can be done with modern glues too.  For the rub joints you would want a quick tack glue like an EVA rather than yellow glue.  Weldbond is the brand of EVA I've used before, but I think regular white glue is EVA (not 100% sure of that it would take some researching).  The lamination joints can be done with TB or whatever, even with hide glue I had to clamp them.

 

The other thing that helps is to make a dedicated crosscut sled for cutting the blocks that make up the core of the banding pack.  I took one of Latta's ideas for that too - a sliding stop block that moves out of the way once the position of the piece being cut is set.  That keeps the off cut from being trapped between the blade and the block, which often causes damage to it and is unpleasant to the saw operator   His sled is shown in a different video, don't remember which.

 

 

14 hours ago, John Morris said:

Well, I mean we are our own worse critics aren't we?  

Probably once they are in a box or something, the typical passerby wouldn't see what you see. I could definitely see a rabbit hole on this. 

I was watching Roy Underhill with a guest making your bands like that, and also some marquetry, I thought man that'd be fun and relaxing to get into.

We are at that!

 

Once in place, you're right that the problems wouldn't be noticeable.  The viewer's eye gets lost in the noise of all the detail and doesn't really focus on just one enough to see the flaws - and the viewer is rarely closer than about 2-3'.

That’s pretty cool, I’ll store that away for a future attempt at something different.

 I’ve found that if we don’t point out the flaws nobody else notices them.

Reminds me of this.

 

 

 

I had overlooked this post earlier, that is really cool. I'll have to go back and watch Latta's video.