I had one of my neatest customers come in the shop this week to prepare me for an order that I'll be getting in the near future.

Here's what she will need...

9" x 12" piano finish walnut plaque
Engraved directly into the wood, with gold paint fill
5" x 7" black marble plaque with photo (turned to landscape orientation)

Here's the challenge: She wants the marble plaque recessed into the walnut plaque. The marble is about 1/4" thick (Lasersketch).

My challenge comes in creating the recess for the marble. I know that we can do it with the laser, but it would take hours to get the proper depth.

I also know that we could route it on our rotary engraver, but the corners would not be very square (need absolute minimum radius at corners).

Are there any cutting tools for the rotary that would fit this need?

Is there another process that would yield the same results, but more efficiently?

I have until the end of March to do this project, so I'm going to use that time finding the best possible way for us to do it.

Thanks!

Cody

Maybe trim the corner radius to a square with a corner chisel. I have used it many times in the same situation. Works good for me.

Quick Cutting Corner Chisel

http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?familyid=4433

Very nice!

I intended to use a parallel cutter for the big chunk of routing....the only issue was going to be the square corners. With a corner chisel, this should be a snap!

Thank you so much for the suggestions!

Bob,

I like the idea of the corner chisel, but I wonder how it will work with the piano-finished plaque. In some cases it may bubble the layers of lacquer that are already on the wood.

Rally's suggestion is a really good one if reversed.

Cut the rectangle with the laser, then rout out the center. A plain chisel can be used flush with the bottom of the rout to pop out the corner. The laser cut will give you the place to rout the edge perfectly with no line up problem.

Philadelphia, PA (Really Bensalem)

When you finally understand it completely... it changes.

Hi Sprinter,

Not sure the coating would not chip. It's extreemely thick....Even with a good sharp chisel. Secondly , not everyone has a steady enough hand to cut perfectly straight....if it's off at all, the squareness of the insert will make any out of square corners obvious. I think Harvey has a better suggestion than my original....laser cut to depth, route out and chisel out corners.......nice clean straight lines even all around, and the messy part hidden by the insert. The route first, laser second would probably be a bit faster because of the longer laser time going all around the cutout, but would probably save time on the routing step because registration between the laser step and routing step would not be as crucial. It will also look more uniform around the perimeter with the laser doing the full cut.

But as always.....more than one way to skin a cat....Your way would definitely save time if someone felt comfortable with hand cutting the corners, and could do so without chipping.

Well, we got the job done....TWICE!

It really wasn't my intent to do this twice, but it works out nicely. Now I have one to give my customer, and another one I can display in my showroom.

For the first iteration, I did all the routing on the laser. Never again. It took about 2-1/2 hours to get to an acceptable depth (about 1/8") with my 35W. The result looks good, but was waaaay to time-consuming.

For the second run, I used a 0.020" profile cutter, set to about 1/8" depth. Of course, I compensated for the extra width at the top of the cut. This took about 10 minutes. My corners are not absolutely perfect, but they're dang good.

For both plaques, the 5" x 7" Lasersketch marble fit perfectly. I engraved some text directly into the wood, then colorfilled it.

I didn't bring my camera to work today, but I'll take pics of both plaques tomorrow before my customer picks the plaque up (I'll have to decide which one to give her).

Thanks to all for the tips!

Can't wait to see the pictures.
For what it is worth (being free advice and all) I would give her the rotary engraved plaque. Why? Because the laser engraved plaque will stink. When the humidity goes up the burnt smell will ooze out of the wood.
I like lasers and they have a lot of great uses but, as you discovered, routing is not one of them.

As promised, I remembered my camera Friday....took several pics, but none of them really turned out well. I think my flash was too bright, and I should have turned it off.

Anyway, this is the best of the pictures.

The picture makes the edges of the engraving look cruddy. They are anything BUT cruddy.....they're very sharp and clean. I filled them with gold enamel three times to make sure the end result was as near to perfection as I could get it (no bubbles, very uniform fill level).

My customer picked up her plaque Friday, and just loved it. I told her that I liked it so much that I made a second one to put on display....and that I would wait until after they presented it before I put it up.

I ended up keeping the plaque that I routed with the rotary engraver, and gave my customer the lasered plaque.

Also noteworthy, I ended up using 1" wide trophy tape and clear silicone to hold the marble in the plaque. The tape probably has little effect, but it made me feel a little more comfortable about handling it before the silicone set. I let the silicone set for almost 24 hours before letting my customer take the plaque....just to make sure. ;-)

The plaque will be presented to the widow of the man in the photo. She'll love it.

Cody,

That's awesome! It sent a chill through my body when I read the "Safe at Home" inscription. I'm sure his wife will cherish it. Beautiful work! Pat yourself on the back for this one.

Jim