Warped inlay blanks

@CncJim makes some good points. Not sure how bad your boards are warped or if your doing a v-carve or traditional inlay but I have done some v-carve inlays with boards that were not flat. If you can get it to lay flat with clamps for v-carving then when you put it in the screw press for glue drying if may come out all right.

I don’t have a screw press per se but I used some MDF on top and bottom and clamped it with 6 clamps. This was on a 6"x12" cribbage board. Your mileage may vary. Another trick I tried that worked was with a v-carve inlay that came out to thin. If you have an accurate way to reposition you work piece and the inlay comes out bad you can run the v-carve on the pocket piece to clean out the plug. You need a really accurate way to position the stock for this to work. I used four 6mm rods that go into holes in my spoil board and the holes I milled into the work piece so I can take the work on and off the mill accurately.

The cribbage board I posted here failed the first inlay but I was able to save the walnut and only lost the thin maple on the first try.

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