Inlay Celtic Cross

These are actually simple projects to construct, wood working is almost only using a router template to cut out the shape, then sanding plus a finish.

Crosses are 10" tall, some pale walnut and cherry (that will get a nice darker color as the light puts the color back in).

I'm always fascinated with Celtic knots, neat design and very decorative. Hard to believe they are this artistic and can play basketball at a professional level 🤠

So this was another experiment. First one (walnut with copper) had issues, second is what I was hoping for.

Cross #1

Searched online for an image and did a screen grab. Some chair time spend getting the image resolution up and breaking it into various parts for the laser.

Went well enough.
I then cut out some thin plywood to make a template using just the cross outline. I find it easier to cut some thin rigid material since to cuts cleaner and faster. I'll then use this part as a router template on some 1/4" masonite to create a working template. Pilot bearing router bits always have a small gap between the bearing and the cutter. 1/4" gives me enough meat in the template so I can be sure the bearing will still ride on the template edge while the cutter will fully cut the wood thickness.

First step was to cut out the shape in the walnut, this is where I started to mess things up a bit.

The laser was set to mark this outline onto a piece of paper taped to the bed of the laser for alignment. Mark made, I could place the cross body in agreement with the layered outline.
I got close, but slightly off center.
The rest of the etching went fine.

I only wanted to fill the elements with the knots, so I taped off the rest and filled the center sections will a mix of epoxy and copper mica. A bit of an overfill to make sure I'd have no pits and gives the small surface bubbles somewhere to go.

A pass through the drum sander with a 36 grit belt to get rid of most of the excess.

Final passes with 180, then a stepping through the grits with the ROS, up to 320 to get the fill smooth and translucent.

Came out with a neato bronze look, really cool EXCEPT there was some leakage under the tape.

I tried some black nail polish (nice small brush) to cover it up. Worked well, but the paint was shiny compared to the burnt etching.

Was hoping that the finish (satin poly) would hide the paints gloss, but that didn't work out so well

Oh well!
You can see the pattern is slightly shifted to the right.

Cross #2

Much better!
Placed painters tape over the board (cherry) and made sure it was well adhered, then had the laser etch out the pattern and to a low power burn of the outline to mark the wood though the tape.

Here you can see the fill (epoxy/blue mica) and where I taped over the areas to keep clean. A more careful pour also kept the epoxy in place.
You can see areas where the outline tracing is peaking out (black line)

Same deal with the drum sander to remove the excess epoxy and get the crisp edges.
With the outline traced onto the board, I was able to easily align the template for cutting on the bandsaw and then routing.

For next time:

Leave it to LBD to find a higher resolution picture which would make the whole process easier!

Thanks for looking!.