While I was in the CLC store on the Friday of the Okoume Fest, one of the things I bought was a sea turtle marquetry inlay. I had intended to just epoxy it to the surface of the stern seat, but learned that I needed to rout out .03" to inlay it into the seat. I was hesitant about doing this but decided to buy it anyway. The inlay included a an acrylic guide cut to the exact shape of the design. Using the guide I used pencil to make a line, and then used a razor knife to scribe around the edge of the guide.
Using a scrap piece of wood, I made several trial runs with the router to get the straight cutting bit set to the proper depth. I needed to take of such a small amount, I went too deep at first. I finally found the right setting, and then routed out the surface close to but not meeting the scribed line. Then I used a chisel to pare away the little bit of material that was left between where I left off with the router and the scribed line. Since my orbital sander was smaller in diameter than the circular marquetry, I used it to carefully smooth out the marks left by the router.
I put epoxy in the circle that I routed out and on the back of the sea turtle. I fit in in place and lined up the wood grain. After covering it with plastic, I put a cement block and some weights on it to hold everything in place.
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| The circle is routed out for the sea turtle marquetry. |
Since I had already mixed up some epoxy, I decided to put a coat of epoxy on the rest of the boards for the stern seat and on the thwarts.
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| The thwarts have their first coat of epoxy--a preview of what they will look like varnished. |
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