Auto Inlay Toolpath

[Natick64]

Can a V Bit be used with the Auto Inlay Toolpath?

[Adrian]

You can cut the female part with a v-bit but then the male wouldn't fit. The v-inlay process is the one to use for inlays with v-bits.

[laflippin]

To further expand on Adrian's comment---the Zank V-Inlay Procedure uses v-bits to engrave the female workpiece and it also uses v-bits to carve the male workpiece that will be used to inlay the female workpiece. Note, the exact angle of the v-bit used in a Zank VIP project is up to the user but, whatever the angle choice, it is imperative to use the same angle bit for both the female and the male halves of the project. In fact, most practitioners also recommend using the same exact bit for both halves. (The most common angle used these days seems to be 60 deg, which provides a good compromise between the inlay depth and the fineness of detail achievable.)

You can easily find Zank's white paper on this technique at this forum. One place you cannot find information about the Zank V-Inlay Procedure is within Vectric software. Zank's procedure is a unique and very powerful approach to wood inlay and it makes use of Vectric toolpaths that are easy to set up within a Vectric project...but it is not a "canned" protocol that has its own Vectric icon.

Another member at this forum, FixItMike, has contributed some nice refinements to the original procedure outlined by Zank--you can find his contributions on this topic by searching within the 24 page thread started by Paul Z in 2006.

In my humble opinion, if you want to do anything complex and/or highly detailed with your inlay work you should forget about the Vectric Inlay procedure (which is nice enough for inlaying text into signs) and start studying the Zank V-Inlay Procedure. It is the holy grail for fine wood inlay.