Picking up from post 1, after the wood was laminated together, I sent them to the laser cutter to have the slices cut.
I sliced it vertically, with the plane going from front to back. This allowed me to have a larger surface areas of slices to ultimately utilize the grain and geometric quality of the laminated wood.
Here is a picture of all the pieces cut, and taped up ready to be stained. The tape is to protect the wood from the stain and poly urethane, because wood glue only bonds raw wood surfaces to other raw wood.
Here is a picture of the aluminum strips I created to wrap around the edges of the wood. I marked out the width of the wood, and cut the strips on a stomp sheer.
The next step was to attach the aluminum sides. I did this by two applications. First I used Loctitie professional super glue to adhere the aluminum to the wood, and then they were secured in plain with stainless steel screws.
Using nail clippers, I cut the edges off, and tension from the screws was enough to hold them down.
Lastly, here are two pictures of the layers being glued together, after a few coats of natural finish stain by Minwax, and a few Polycrylic urethane coats:
As you can see from the photos, a core system was set up to insure all slices line up, but the holes were left off of the front and back layer so they would not be visible.
For more work and info on my artwork, check out my artist website:
www.timkentart.com
Tim Kent
