After weeks of research and practice on the Altmill using v-carve pro, I have finally gotten great results.
I made this cutting board and 2 others as gifts and 1 donation to a silent auction at my favorite charity. This board had one misplaced strip that ruined the pattern, so it has resided on my back porch for 7 years until I could fix it.
Tried to do the typical Vetric v-carve methods and could not get fine enough detail with standard v-bits. Stumbled upon a you tube video at Gearhead Daily and his tutorial was concise, to the point with explanations of why he was doing it his way.
I got the bit he recommended (Amana 46280-k) 6.2 deg. tapered ball nose. Downloaded the tool database from Amana and off to the races. Here’s a picture of my first experiment. The outside diameter of the star is 20 mm.
I especially like this method because it gives the inlays steep sides which allows for surfacing and sanding in the future. Pictures of the pocket and plug, pocket depth of 5.08 mm.
Learned the hard way that with fine detail do the roughing/clear path last otherwise the small details can be ripped out of the wood such as the antennae on this butterfly.
The inlay is white oak, the cutting board was made from white oak, jatoba, maple and cherry.
The board languished in mineral oil overnight and a final treatment of beeswax/mineral oil this morning and shipped off to my sister.
Cheers!