Thread: THE Nitty Gritty - Family Woodworking

OK, that might seem like a strange title for a work in progress but I think after you see this project you"ll understand the reason. I've been doing Intarsia for a long time and pride myself in putting lots of detail into my pieces by using only natural colored wood, detail carving and using lots of itty bitty pieces to add as much realism as I can to my work.
Last week I was asked to make some custom Beer Tap Handles for a guy here in town that has his own home brewery. He sent me a photo of the logo that he has and asked if I could carve or etch the logo onto the handle somehow.

Picture of logo

Don't do much carving or etching I said but I do Intarsia which is a unique type of woodworking that might be something you'd like to see. Invited him to the shop to see some of my work. We discussed pricing, woods, sizes and I was given the go-ahead to get em done as an intarsia. Talk about a challenge!!! Like I said, I like working with small pieces but I gotta tell you , I might have bitten off more than I can chew with this project.
Just to give an idea of the size of these things, the total width of the logo is 4 1/4" so keeping the scale correct means that the inlay has to be contained in a 3 " circle. So the letters are less than 1/4" tall. I've cut some pretty small pieces before but to cut and fit letters this small and inlay them into a background--well that's just getting down to the nitty gritty part of this type of work.

That little black spec is the letter "E"

So after a little trial and error (LOTS) and learning a few new cutting and sanding techniques here is the first of 4 Rabid Otter logo's. Still have to turn the handle and glue everything in but I do like a challenge.

Source: http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?28334-THE-Nitty-Gritty

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