AKA Always read directions carefully

The plan was to make a small sign that said “CUBE sweet CUBE” for a friend/co-worker and myself. I was going to mill some lettering into a nice piece of wood, and fill the pocket with colored inlay resin. I will introduce the mill in a post soon. Until then, I want to share a complete screw up I had.

I started by re-sawing (Cutting in half length wise. It turns a thick piece of wood into two thinner pieces of wood) a scrap piece of maple. Some quick sanding got the tops flat and ready to go into the mill. A 0.063″ mill bit did a great job of removing material where the text will be. I sprayed both pieces with a quick coat of lacquer to keep the dye from soaking in along the grain. With the woodworking over, I moved on to filling the text area with a colored epoxy resin.

I taped off the area to be filled with black and mixed up the product. The inlay filler I used is a resin with dye made by Inlace. I metered out an ounce of the black resin and put in the proper amount of hardener. After a good mix I poured it into the “CUBE” letters and let it sit. There was a bit of shrinkage, but the results seemed ok. Next I switched to the “sweet” area and mix up the red resin with a proper amount of hardener… or so I thought.

It turns out that the black I got was both resin AND dye pre-mixed together. The red, was just dye. It is supposed to be added to clear resin. 12 hours later, It is still liquid, and I am sad. I can’t come up with any good way to wash out the offending dye. I think this is going to have to be a do-over project. In retrospect, the lettering is a lot deeper than it needs to be. A big waste of resin. Unfortunately this stuff is hard to get. I can’t find it in town, and no one online carries inlace’s full product line. I might try to find their clear resin and do it over, or I might try someone else’s epoxy dye that is more attainable.