Pretty Purple Paperweight

Final piece polished and shiny. I love how the light shines through the acrylic.

Marking out the cuts. I drew a full sized diagram on paper to work out what angles I liked, then to get the actual cuts I re-drew it with single lines rather than the 5mm thick acrylic. I added a mm or so to allow for kerf. Doing it again I'd probably add a bit more to allow for better finishing and linishing of the individual slices. I was surprised at how little wood I actually needed, it felt a bit unintuitive.

Cut the wood. My bandsaw-fu isn't the best, so some of the cuts were a little wonky (didn't help that the bandsaw blade is little old and dull and pulling to one side. Ahh the joys of a shared workshop!) In order to neaten up the cuts and to ensure a good gluing surface I had to linish the slices on the belt sander, which cost me some more wood and size.

First test fit of the wood with the purple acrylic in it. Held together with an elastic band for this shot.

Held up to the light when elastic banded. This was where I started to think that this might turn out pretty...

I initially tried to clamp it all in one go, but the shape of it meant it wouldn't play ball. That turned my night into a fun time happy show of constant mixing of epoxy resin and clamping. I used 5 minute epoxy, which saved me a lot of time, but did mean that I spent the evening in a constant state of epoxy-setting-panic mode.

More clamping! In order to save time I clamped in stages working in from both ends, so I could be clamping one bit whilst the next dried. you can see here I've got three bits glued up - two clamped and one in the middle that is waiting to be attached to the bits that are drying. You can also see my pile of yet-to-be-glued sections in the middle bottom of the pic.

(Also, sorry for potato quality at this point - these pics were hurriedly taken to send to the person this is being made for using the facebook messenger app on my phone, which drops the quality significantly..)

Approaching completion.
I nearly ruined the whole project several times with incorrect glue ordering, or with nearly sticking a slice in upside down (which would have messed up the grain patterns on the final thing) I made marks on the bits to ensure they went in the right order, but when the squeeze out covered my pencil marks things got... tricky. Better marks next time!

Final clamping. Man, this felt good.

How it looked after squaring(ish) up and flattening on the disc and belt. The static sander died a death halfway through this process, so I had to resort to the traditional tiny hand belt sander held upside down in a vice trick, which made things harder, and explains why it's not *quite* as neat as it could be. That's my excuse anyway.

One of the issues with my poor epoxy and clamping was that as it got sanded back, small voids were exposed. So every now and again I had to stop the sanding and drop a small daub of epoxy into the gap to fill it and give a smooth finish.

More gap filling - the fine edge of the wood here got a bit crumbly so I saturated it with epoxy to reinforce it.

Last bit of gap filling. A useful trick for filling fine gaps with quite thick epoxy is to slap the epoxy on thick, then hit it with a heat gun. Not too hot, or it'll go weird, but if you just gently heat it it thins out and wicks into the small gaps nicely. Alternatively use a gap filling CA glue.

More sanding, starting to see the pretty coming through

More sanding. There was a lot of sanding here.

Final finish with brasso to take the acrylic to glass clear and Danish oil to finish the oak. The little light spots of trapped sanding dust went away with a few more coats of Danish oil.

I like the way you can see the wood grain fade through the thickening plastic.

So very shiny. I like shiny.