Monday, June 6, 2016

Domino Set

I was asked to make a domino set sightly different than the one that I had previously made.  The main difference was the size.  This was 3/4" thick, 3 1/4" wide and 6 1/2" tall.  There was an additional inlay that I did on this set that was not done on the first set.  The horizontal dark line between the dominoes proved to be more challenging than I had planned.  I first cut the strips for the inlay and those were not all the same thickness even though the setup was all the same.  This was a good thing because my grooving in the to accept the inlay was not all the same either.  I am not saying they were off by a lot but it was enough that a snug fit on one was a loose fit on another.  Then there was the ones that I would not even be able to beat the inlay in.  Those are easy because I just opened up the groove.  I was not off by much, about a business card thickness.  I want to attribute it to blade wobble.  I use a standard blade but ran the part through twice to center the groove.  The second pass did not have a lot of meat to cut into so it may have taken the path of less resistance.
The specs on this project are pretty simple.  They are maple with a walnut inlay.  I finished them in lacquer.  I spent a little more time on these then I do on my toys.  Mostly for personal reasons.  I wanted to see if I good get a nice thick smooth film finish.  I did.  They looked great.  They have three coats of lacquer with sanding at 220, and 440 between the coats. 
I also made a box for the set.  I tried to make the length a close tolerance and the sides a little more loose.  In hind sight I should have done it the other way around.  The three coats of lacquer over 28 pieces made enough of a difference to make them tight.  They still all fit and looked beautiful but it was tight enough that if the wood moved a little they would never come out.  So I sanded the back side of all of them down and re-applied the finish.  Now they fit great.  Note to self:  Need to think about finish thickness items.



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