Holding Inlay material

[olsonsview]

Prep-Sol

Someone asked earlier about it. It is a Dupont product, sold in qts and gal cans. Buy it anywhere that sells Dupont Auto Body paints. If a NAPA dealer is handier you can use their equivalent: Fin-L Wash, also available in those same sizes. I used to use both back when I painted cars for a living, and they seemed equal in quality. They also help to remove any silicone contamination that might occur.
Good posts in this thread guys !

 

[treed]

holding inlay

been doing the pexiglass method that cueman does,it's cheaper and quicker and less hassel.use the paper backed stuff,alot of places have scrap cuttings that they will give away.

 

[Mr Hoppe]

I like sanding the part out using a thickness sander because it puts no pressure at all on thin sharp points. I haven't tried the other methods mentioned, but would think you would break a few tips off while trying to "pop" thin pieces out. I certainly could be wrong, but sanding them out works just fine for me.

 

[Mr Hoppe]

My process:
I've been attaching a sacrificial substrate to my table first. I then put a 3/4" router bit in and mill the surface down a couple thousanths, ensuring a flat surface that is parallel to the plane of the spindle.

For smaller inlays, I cut a blank just big enough for all the parts I'm cutting. I then place some sticky masking tape to the back side, using a roller to press it firmly in place. I then superglue the tape side to my sacrificial board.

Depending on the size of the parts and the type of material, I'll usually cut to within .002 +/- of cutting through, leaving an "onion skin" keeping the part attached. Getting the right thickness on the onion skin will allow you to just pop the pieces out. I'll take a thin, flexible putty knife and separate the part blank from the tape, which stays attached to the superglue, attached to the substrate.

One benefit of surfacing the sacrificial board in this way, is ensuring that the onion skin is uniform in thickness. I'll indicate my tool on the surface of the sacrificial board, zero the Z axis, jog the Z to my material thickness, and then zero my Z again, setting the Z zero to my part height.

There are probably better ways, but so far I've had great results. YMMV.

Regards,
Frank

Frank, no offence intended, but that's a lot of work with no additional benefit to the end product.

 

[Jr's Farm]

Frank, no offence intended, but that's a lot of work with no additional benefit to the end product.

None taken.

Perhaps I should expand on my process a bit, as there is actually a little more to the reason I've been doing it this way.

For one, the working area of my table is actually 29" by 34", give or take. All I have right now is just a 3/4" particle board sacrificial bed on it, and it has never been milled parrallel to the XY plane yet...thus the reason I've been using an additional, smaller sacrificial board in the method originally described. Some day I'll do an actual MIC-6 aluminum bed and surface that, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

I also thickness plane my inlay material on the trued-up board to ensure a proper thickness. When using the small end mills, .020, .0156, the depth of cut is very small, so material thickness is very critical when doing wide inlays. By surface planing my sacrificial board and inlay material, I can achieve an onion skin thinner than paper. Seperating the parts doesn't require prying per se, but more like pushing the part out as if through a rolling paper, only thinner. The above also only really applies to small parts. The larger point materials I can usually get away with just carpet tape or contact.

Besides, I don't mind the extra work, as it's all a lesson (to me) in utilizing the machine to it's most accurate abilities. I get a little OCD sometimes

Regards,
Frank

 

[DanO]

If I go with a new drum sander what keeps the inlays from being sucked up the exhaust, or from shooting out like a bullet?

 

[scdiveteam]

If I go with a new drum sander what keeps the inlays from being sucked up the exhaust, or from shooting out like a bullet?

Dan,

Sand them down to where it is getting real thin and about to sand through, then take the last pass without the vacuum on.

Rick

 

[Jr's Farm]

If I go with a new drum sander what keeps the inlays from being sucked up the exhaust, or from shooting out like a bullet?

Apply tape to the face, then sand the back. The tape helps hold everything together.

Frank

 

[cuesmith]

I buy 1/8 inch 4X8 ft hardboard for less than 5.00 a sheet. I cut this into 3X12 inch pieces so I get 128 pieces. I then drill a 3/8 hole at each end 11 inch apart. On my table I have two tapped 1/4-20 tapped holes so that one of these boards can be screwed down. Now I just use 3M spray contact cement on both the hardboard and the inlay material surfaces, wait 10 minutes or so and then stick them together. I have a cabinet with partitions where I have many dozens of these inlay/boards already glued up so that what ever inlay material I need I just pull out for instant use. These boards of hardboard are cheap (about 4 cents each) sacrificial substrate that the cutter can cut into a little with no harm to the cutter nor the table.

After cutting my inlays I just use some "auto wax wash" which is a paint prep liquid used to clean a body before spraying and run some into the cut lines for the inlays. This stuff seeps under the inlays and dissolves the glue so that the inlays just fall off of the board. I then drop the inlays into a jar of wax wash to clean the parts of what's left of the dissolved glue before use.

Dick

This is also the way I've been doing it for many years. The "hard board" Dickie speaks of is also known as "Masonite" to some, if that helps. I have also used "mounting tape", the stuff that is sort of a foam tape with the sticky stuff on both sides. It holds very good and also comes off easily with Prep Sol. I've been milling a bunch of aluminum fixtures and jigs this past week most of which were made from 1 1/2" thick aluminum plate which required that I cut the profile clear through. The mounting tape worked great.

 

[Mr Hoppe]

Snip... I get a little OCD sometimes

Regards,
Frank

I can relate.

 

[cueman]

Sherm Custom Billiard Cues
The Cuemaker for the REAL Hall of Famers & Champions (Not that BS BCA joke!)
Gary Spaeth, Steve Cook, Cornbread Red and my dear friend Danny DiLiberto! Plus some future HOF'ers

This caught my eye for the first time today.
Are you refering to the One Pocket Hall of Fame or what?
Or are you saying your guys are the REAL Champions and Sigel, Strickland, Archer, Mosconi, Balukas, Jones and the others are jokes?

 

[cuesmith]

This caught my eye for the first time today.
Are you refering to the One Pocket Hall of Fame or what?
Or are you saying your guys are the REAL Champions and Sigel, Strickland, Archer, Mosconi, Balukas, Jones and the others are jokes?

Yes I'm referring to the One Pocket Hall of Fame as the one with a little creditability. The BCA Hall of Fame is a joke! Not the players you mentioned, but the BCA organization. They do nothing for pool whatsoever and their method of choosing players to be Hall of Famers is what I'm really against. The fact that they haven't yet inducted Danny DiLiberto is an example of their absurdity! I won't mention the names of people I feel were inducted that never should have been, or at least not yet out of good taste but all of the ones you mentioned are there deservedly so, some of them after Danny though. JMHO One of the problems is that they induct some younger players when while they definitely belong there in due time, the older players who should also be there are passed over until the memory of them is such that they never get in.

 

[Newton]

If you fixate your inlay material using which ever method prefered, why not cut the inlays using tabs? The tabs fixate the part and the tab would be placed on the bottom of the material.
Now just use a nice cutter or something to sit down in your chair and cut the inlays out. More like pushing out those plastic parts for your kids model car or RC car.
If you have planed the top of the inlayed material, you glue them down with the left overs of the tab above the cues surface (the inlays thicknes must be higher than the pockets depth with at least the tabs hight) and you turn off these after gluing.
K

 

[cuesmith]

If you fixate your inlay material using which ever method prefered, why not cut the inlays using tabs? The tabs fixate the part and the tab would be placed on the bottom of the material.
Now just use a nice cutter or something to sit down in your chair and cut the inlays out. More like pushing out those plastic parts for your kids model car or RC car.
If you have planed the top of the inlayed material, you glue them down with the left overs of the tab above the cues surface (the inlays thicknes must be higher than the pockets depth with at least the tabs hight) and you turn off these after gluing.
K

Because the tabs you suggest would take away just that much depth you can inlay the part and it's not necessary. I inlay my parts as deep as possible limited to the length of cut of the end mills. Any tabs would just reduce the depth I could inlay my parts. You have to remember that we're inlaying into a round object and the wider the inlays, the more likely they are to "wipe out" when you take your final pass on the cue. If you were inlaying into a flat object or the inlay shapes could be cut with a large (think 1/8th") endmill, your idea might be a good idea. But if you use small cutters to get sharp points and finer detail you are limited on how deep you can cut the pockets and how sharp of inner radius' you can cut.



Sherm

 

[cueman]

Yes I'm referring to the One Pocket Hall of Fame as the one with a little creditability. The BCA Hall of Fame is a joke! Not the players you mentioned, but the BCA organization. They do nothing for pool whatsoever and their method of choosing players to be Hall of Famers is what I'm really against. The fact that they haven't yet inducted Danny DiLiberto is an example of their absurdity! I won't mention the names of people I feel were inducted that never should have been, or at least not yet out of good taste but all of the ones you mentioned are there deservedly so, some of them after Danny though. JMHO One of the problems is that they induct some younger players when while they definitely belong there in due time, the older players who should also be there are passed over until the memory of them is such that they never get in.

That makes sense. I do not know how they select who gets on the ballot, but I did get a vote the 11 years I was a BCA member between the names on the ballot. I do not know if Danny was ever on a ballot or not. I do not remember him being on there the years I set up at the trade shows. It is tough to bring a ballot down to two or three names with so many deserving people out there. Then once they are on a ballot it is up to the members to vote. Earl got out voted on there two other times if memory serves me right.
I would also guess that there are more qualified one pocket players that have not made it into the one pocket hall of fame than others that are already in also. And that is just a guess. My point is maybe you are too hard on the BCA for who is and who is not in their hall of fame.

 

[cuesmith]

That makes sense. I do not know how they select who gets on the ballot, but I did get a vote the 11 years I was a BCA member between the names on the ballot. I do not know if Danny was ever on a ballot or not. I do not remember him being on there the years I set up at the trade shows. It is tough to bring a ballot down to two or three names with so many deserving people out there. Then once they are on a ballot it is up to the members to vote. Earl got out voted on there two other times if memory serves me right.
I would also guess that there are more qualified one pocket players that have not made it into the one pocket hall of fame than others that are already in also. And that is just a guess. My point is maybe you are too hard on the BCA for who is and who is not in their hall of fame.

Chris,
You may be right, but they no longer let the BCA members vote on the HOF ballots. As I understand it's all done by committee now and there's a lot of politics involved in the committees. I also used to be a member of the BCA primarily because you had to be to have a booth at the BCA Trade Show. Several years ago I paid my $1200 for booth space + at least another Grand in expenses and got put in a corner behind Mikael Daraveev"s Tractor Trailer and had almost zero traffic. I think they had as many foreign based companies or US companies that sold primarily Asian imported goods than they had American companies and the foreigners got most of the prime locations. I raised so much hell about where they stuck me that they offered me a free booth the next year, but I still had all of my expenses and the spot they gave me that year was only marginally better than behind the 18 wheeler. Another year after I paid my annual dues, which were rather stiff for a business member, I received a box in the mail with 10,000 copies of the BCA's "How To Play Pool Right"! That was absolutely ridiculous! I'm a small shop and probably won't talk to 10,000 customers in my career! I called them and tried to return them and they told me to just throw them away if I couldn't use them. They wasted so much money on things that were unnecessary and could not sponsor any pro tournaments. I really can't think of one good thing about todays BCA. They no longer have the youth programs. They sold the BCA Pool League to mark Griffin. All they do is the BCA Trade show and that's just so they can justify the salaries they pay the people who organize and run the trade show. And that's a joke too! Instead of having it in a central location where more people could attend, they have it in Vegas almost every year which most everyone will tell you sucks. Too many of your customers spend their money gambling in the casinos instead of buying products at the show. And they always have it in the summer when business and cash flow is terrible making it hard for the pool room owners and billiard supply stores to shake loose any money anyway. I think the whole organization is very poorly managed and should be scrapped and started over from square one with the emphasis on pool!

Well I'm done ranting on this subject that's totally off topic! Sorry for wasting the space in the thread!

 

[DanO]

Winner winner chicken dinner! I’ve tried epoxy, double face tape, and spray adhesive, but I definitely prefer the drum sander. I’m sure with the proper technique those other methods work, I just could not master them. I’m trying to hold something strong enough that it doesn’t come off while machining, yet not too strong that I break it when prying it off the board. Too iffy for me. Single faced tape on the machined side and the drum sander was much simpler.

The journey is half the fun. Thanks for the road map gentlemen. Oh, and thanks for the ebony bdcues. I think I can set my own thickness next batch.

 

[LukeChute]

I have a couple of questions on holding inlay material while you cut the male parts. What I have been doing is taking a piece of 3/16 material or slightly over and lightly gluing it with 5 min epoxy to another piece of wood that is help on my vacuum table. I was doing 1/8 inlays but found that they were a bit shallow so I do 3/16 and sometimes .25. Anyway what I do after I cut the male parts is to pry the inlay piece off, comes off rather easily and then sand the back until the pieces come out. Kind of a pain in the butt but I was hoping I could get a few other ideas, there must be a better way. Also how many thousands over do you make the butt before you inlay. Appreciate your input and thanks.

Happiness
Mark

Here is how I do it. You can see in the picture that the slab is held by the
edges and cut within a few thou of through. Just pop them out and if you
glue them in upside down there is no cleanup needed on the back side.

Dan