How To: Embedding Metal Design into Wood

My buddy did this for his, at the time, girlfriend in a jewlery box. He used one of the Cero metals, they make a variety, I believe it was Ceromatrix. They expand on cooling and melt at, about boiling water temp. Looks just as you wanted. ...lew...

Herschel House did that sort of thing building a kentucky rifle in one of his videos. In this case, it was making a chevron-style nose cap.

The wood was curly maple and he poured pewter into the design. Lead pencil was used to help the pewter to flow into the grooves, and then the whole thing was sanded smooth. No burning of the wood, and it looked pretty sharp.

Another way of inlaying into wood involves using a bow drill, "passer bit", and brass template. The passer bit is two pieces of sharp, springy wire and they excavate the wood inside of the template design. This is how brass inlay was done on things like rosewood squares in the 19th century, and I believe violin bow-makers still do this to inlay mother of pearl etc.

Good luck!

Matt Turner Turner Racing Shells Ltd.

Dental amalgam, be advised it will contain a little mercury.

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 02:58:52 -0700, "Mark S. Suever" brought forth from the murky depths:

For fine work you can use a router with a 1/16" diameter bit to carve out the pattern at an even depth, then hammer in silver banding. A cabinet scraper or sander will pare it down smooth.

Or you can use the new metallic epoxies which don't need a flat bottom. Fine Woodworking magazine did an article on that a couple years ago.

-- Vidi, Vici, Veni ---

I was cutting a pizza with a round cutter. The pizza was on foil and the foil on a wood cutting board. I now have the pattern of the cut pressed into the wood with alluminum. Try that!

Thanks x3!

you cant melt and pour metal into wood and have it look like it is part of the original.. the hot metal will keep burning the wood and you gonna have a crevise next to the wood on both sides and bottom and mess it up.. the stuff you are talking about is prepared (metal) first and then the wood is cut undersized and then the metal is pressed into the wood.. i guess yuo talking about a 1/16 in. line or so... all around the outside of the objects... a shaened bottom on the metal might make it work like a nail going into the wood,, more wood on top and a few hammer blows would do this on small pieces... if you want something like the size of a quarter to be sitting in the wood then you got to use a dremel tool or such to get rid of the thickness of the quarter to remove the wood where the quarter will go....

Maybe guitar fret material would work. You can buy it in different colors and widths. Rout a slot and hammer it in. Silver solder might work also. Experiment on some scraps.

Process was done on rifles from the early days of the country till mass produced rifles were made in the factories. I've seen it done on the Woodwright Shop program with a group doing old rifles and they cut a groove in the wood and inserted a thin metal strip. The process even included undercutting the wood so that the metal would be hooked into the wood. Thicker stuff may want casting but for the thin filligree, the above process is probably the one to do. I'll note that any casting process will tend to fall out due to the shrinkage of the metal as it cools along with the burning of the wood while casting if the metal is too hot.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works evevery time it is tried!

Brownells Gunsmithing supply sells all the materiels for doing this. It is usually done with a very small router bit and a template. The grooves are filled with a silver or gold polymer stick that is melted and dripped into the grooves, then sanded off.

You can also try ordinary solder. Depending on the wood and the temperature of the solder, it may not scorch the wood noticably. A friend of mine did this on hardwoods. The wood was round, and the groove in it went all the way around, and (if I recall correctly - this was long ago) he laid some copper wire in the groove to give the solder some extra reinforcement. But try it out.

Dave Golber