Wood Inlay

As part of my job at the University of Minnesota Department of Art I have wonderful opportunities to do research and create demos for students. So on my down time this summer I created a laser cut wood inlay example. For the demo piece I chose to use a Shepard Fairey design. I thought the design would work well because it was a two tone design and it also showed how you can create both patterned inlays and illustrative based inlays.

I found that gluing a layer of contact paper (with the sticky side facing up) to a flat substrate helped to keep the wood veneer flat while it was being cut.

As with any new project, I learned a few things while I was working on it. First that generally speaking you don’t need to account for the kerff (or width of the laser beam), just make sure you don’t have any parts that will be burned up because they are too small. There is not a noticeable kerf gap between the parts and the gap that is there is probably good for possible expansion of the wood caused by humidity.

I also learned that it takes a substantial amount of time to individually glue the pieces. So, as a solution to this problem, I placed the cut out pieces onto a piece of contact paper with the back facing up, picked out the parts of the design that were not needed with an xacto knife and then used a paint roller to apply wood glue to the back side. This saves a lot of time and because you have two sets of inlays, a positive and a negative, they both will register perfectly.

For this demo piece I chose to use Masonite as a substrate for the inlay to glue on. I was told that you want to use a uniform material like Masonite, MDF or a solid piece of wood. If you use a sheet of plywood, over time, the extra layer will warp the plywood because there will no longer be even tension on the laminations. The image below shows the final piece; linseed oil, Arm-R-Seal and polyurethane were used to finish the wood.

On a final note I think this digital technique has quite a bit of potential to be explored further. When one considers the works of Alison Elizabeth Taylor one can quickly see how digital fabrication can open up new possibilities. Taylor uses traditional techniques to create her inlays and some interesting information about her process can be found here.