Prism Shaped Name Plate for Kaitlyn

I made a three sided nameplate for my goddaughter Kaitlyn’s 1st birthday.  The main body is basswood and “Kaitlyn” is inlayed on each side of the equilateral triangle.  The inlays were done using the v-carve inlay technique.  Each side has a different font and inlay wood type (walnut, wenge and padauk).  I used F-Engrave to generate the g-code for the inlays.  Below are some pictures of the final product and below I have a few in process pictures.

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Here are a few in process pictures:

Pre inlay, the name has just been v-carved into the basswood

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Here is one side ready for gluing the wenge inlay wood into the basswood.  I started with a rectangular piece of basswood and when I cut it into the triangular shape I saved the cutoff parts to make a fixture for holding the part while v-carving on each flat side.  I made the fixture by gluing the cutoff parts to a piece of scrap.  You can see the edge of the fixture under the basswood in the picture below.

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Here is the part with all of the inlay parts glued into the basswood.  The last step in the inlay process is removing the excess material from the inlay wood.

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Finally a few close-ups for fun so you can see some of the detail.

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Everything went pretty smoothly except for the padauk side.  Red dust from the padauk spread all over the surface of the basswood while I was sanding the inlayed wood down.  I managed to remove most of the dust and finished by scraping the surface instead of sanding.  If I do a padauk inlay again I might try sealing the surface of the base material to minimize the amount of dust that can get trapped in the base material.

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