Noah B Woodworks

I’ve been racking my brain to figure out a fun innovative way to utilize my CNC machine. It is much easier said than done. I’m working on a humidor that is a small mahogany lidded box for my cigars, but then inlaying that box into a larger piece of wood and then shaping that larger piece of wood into something interesting with a handheld sanding disc (or something of the sort). The lidded box will be encased in wood, similar to the thin strips of Spanish cedar that line the inside of an artisan crafted humidor.

These instruments shine when there is more than one cut made on a singular object; when the process has multiple steps. The trick is getting the machine homed to the right location, especially if you’re intending to flip the wood over 180 degrees. I’ve seen people drill holes with the quarter inch bit into the spoil board, and then use dowels to hold the stock in place. This method is genius because you don’t have to re zero any axis, you just flip the stock over and it is already aligned perfectly to the spoil board.

The other trick, and the one I am currently working on, is getting the tolerances right. Any seasoned woodworker knows that wood moves when you cut it. It tends to bow and warp in unpredictable ways, no matter how dry it is. When you relieve the internal stress, the stresses that remain tend to take over. When designing a lidded box on the CNC, you need to ensure that there is a small gap because the wood will move. The size of that gap I am still figuring out. I’m chasing a nice piston fit, but not so much that the box won’t close.

I’m looking forward to inlaying more with the CNC. In the past, I attempted a more advanced V carve method, with a 6 degree bit, but I could never iron out the tolerances. I never offset the mating piece so when I went to glue them together, hardly any of the male piece dipped below the surface of the female piece. I’d like to simplify my approach and do a vertical inlay to practice the fundamentals of inlaying with a CNC. My vision is for a circle inlayed into a piece of wood. Simple. 1 inch stock, with half of an inch depth, mill the piece flat and repeat. I’d like to inlay 3-4 different circles each with different wood, on top of each other, with the centers offset in multiple steps, and then make something from that stock. The resulting piece resembling a Venn Diagram but looser and artsier in feeling. This is where getting the centers correct (or incorrect) is important when doing things in multiple steps on the CNC.

I had another idea as I was driving to work this morning: to inlay a ring of circles onto a small piece of wood, Almost like a clock face or a moon chart. Inlay circles of different woods in steps but cut into the previous circle until a ring has been created. The inlay method is simple and vertical, with no fancy V bit needed, but I still need to work out the tolerances. I don’t think it will work unless there is at least a .001 inch gap between the female piece and the male piece. It’s amazing that these instruments can achieve that level of precision. I’ll start small, with no tolerance, see if I can slam the pieces together, and go from there in .001 increments. As the wood moves, and stresses are relieved it becomes harder to gauge what tolerance is needed. The glue has to go somewhere and if it doesn’t then the pieces aren’t really getting glued together.

These are fun problems to have. I bought a cool tool that is complicated and flexible. How do I make it work for me? Drawing on my last post, how can I use it to create something repeatable, each object is unique and has inherent value?