Metal Inlay Into Wood - Resin/Epoxy with metal powder?
I've been experimenting and have not yet achieved a satisfactory result.
I'd like to be able to engrave shapes into wood and fill it with something that looks like metal once sanded and finished.
I've read a bunch of different stuff on the net, as well as tried a few things myself. This is what I've tried so far:- Melting solder until it is a big liquid blob, waiting until it just starts to cool and becomes slightly less liquid, then jamming it into the engraving just before it goes too crystalline to be worked with. This so far has been the only method that achieves close to a real metal look in terms of its shine, but it also has the disadvantage of poor adhesion and burning the wood, requiring lots of sanding back. Also, the side-spill from the application gets stuck in the grain surrounding and is very hard to remove, resulting in lots of little speckles. Still, this has been the only method I have found that I can get a satisfactory shine from.
- Casting Resin with aluminium powder from a metal foundry. The particles in the powder are very fine, but not as fine as the "silver powder". I have tried many different ratios, but found that the higher the ratio of powder to resin, the higher the shine from the finished product once sanded. Still, I have not been able to get close to the shine I'd like and it still just looks grey, rather then reflective. It is close to the finish I'd like, but not close enough. I prefer working with the resin, as I can use less catalyst to enable working on larger pieces for longer and I can use a syringe to squeeze it into the engraved channels with 2 or 3mm spilling above the channel, allowing it to fill properly once sanded.
- Casting Resin with "silver powder" from an art supplies shop, which is still aluminium powder, but with much finer particles. I was pleasantly surprised initially, as the ultra-fine powder really did look silver on the inside of the glass walls of the jar and on my fingertips. When it was mixed in the resin, the resin immediately glowed and shone and looked sufficiently reflective. Once it had cured, it still looked very shiny. Sadly, the moment it was sanded it went grey and dull. I tried sanding it up to 1200, but the dullness remained and did not improve at any point. I was very disappointed at this as it had seemed extremely promising at first. I am considering now that I might do a 2 step process with the pre-mixed silver powder resin laid down first a few mm below, then a clear layer over the top. Hopefully this will allow the shine to stay on the first layer and the clear will protect it from sanding. The difficultly will be making sure that the clear layer is thick enough to not get sanded down.
- Superglue and aluminium powder. I'd seen this recommended by a few people elsewhere on the net. I tried a few different methods. Filling the cavity with glue, then sprinkling the powder on top, pre-mixing the powder into the glue and filling the cavity with powder first then gluing over it. These all gave very inconsistent results which would have required several applications as there were many pits and bubbles after sanding back. The shine from the finished product was almost the same, or possibly even brighter than the resin, but still not shiny enough.
- Selleys "Knead-It" epoxy sticks. OK, I didn't really expect this to work, but I thought I'd try it just to be thorough. It just looked dull and grey when finished.
Now, I'm sure that some of you people in here have tried this sort of thing before and hopefully also succeeded.:wink: I've browsed and searched for ages in here, but could not find anything.
If anyone can give me any tips on this, or possibly name some products to try, I'd be greatly appreciative.
I've attached a picture of a test piece I made. I tried making a picture frame out of some old fence paling. I figured I'd try it on something small before I tried it on a larger piece of finished furniture. After much swearing and re-working, I eventually settled with solder.
Unfortunately, when I turned it upside down to hammer in the frame joiners, large bits of the solder fell out. :doh: I ended up doing a dodgy repair with re-melting some parts, super-gluing others and using resin in some parts too. I had originally buffed up the solder lines with steel wool, but as this made no difference to the resin or the glue bits, I gave up and just sanded down the bits I needed.
You can't really see it too well in the photo, but some parts have a different sheen depending on the method used. This gives a good example of the differences in the finish of the different methods.
is this the sort of thing you are after
is this the sort of thing you are after