Timberdan

That's exactly what I do on all my fretwork projects. Im picking up a nice live edge slab of White Ash tomorrow that is planed to 1/2 inch and kiln dried . Can't wait to get started on cutting it out . Thanks for the feedback

Thanks for the reply . I usually go no thinner than 1/2 " for all my fretwork projects so i guess what you are saying is to get kiln dried wood for starters. I guess I have to find an honest broker that sells live edge wood. BTW I always use natural hardwood for all my cutouts and I use baltic birch as a backer. I can get white pine but I find it breaks easily especially for advanced fretwork projects that I have made so that's why I stick to using hardwood because its much stronger and it soaks the tung oil finish extremely well that I use for a finish on most of my fretwork pieces.

I have a brown trout pattern that I want to scroll onto a piece of live edge wood and I was wondering how thin I could possibly get away with without much warping. I also want to know what type of hardwood is less prone to warpage . I was looking at some past posts and the one that interested me the most was an eagle fretwork piece that looks like it was cut into a live edge slab of white ash and the post was dated October 10 2018 by KMMCRAFTS . Beautiful looking piece I may add I was wondering how thick of piece of slab wood the eagle was cut into . The pattern that I have is 22" long by 13 1/2" wide . Any feedback would be appreciated Thanks Dan

I love cutting out owls #1 walnut all the way for me Frank .Very nice work indeed. Cutting out the sharp corners may take a bit longer to do but the final results sure worth the extra effort IMHO.

Thanks for all the comments I owe a lot to my rebuild of my EX-21 saw. It's way more enjoyable to cut with now that im not fighting with it. A new drive assembly and 2 new rocker arms set me back quite a bit but I have a new saw again and im looking forward to getting back into cutting out more projects now that im home again. I have a few ideas for a new Kathy Wise tree frog pattern I have come up with. Ive made a few in the past but this one was inspired by a poison dart frog intarsia project I saw a few years ago and I just picked up some purple heart wood to get it going soon. I also have a brown trout fretwork pattern that I am also dying to start I just got a nice piece of black cherry to glue up its 24" x 14" wide. Thanks again for all the positive feedback .

Forgot to mention that I used tung oil as a wood finish

Just thanking The Razz for his portrait that I downloaded for my wife's birthday present of the Rolling Stones. I hope that I did it justice. I used 1/2 " black cherry as my wood with routered frame edges as I usually do on a lot of my fretwork projects. I used FDUR #3 and # 1 blades and a #3 new spiral blade for smoothing out the letters.

Sorry to see that happen Eplfan. It sucks when you put the time into a project and something happens like that. I always use at least 1/2" cherry or ash boards and I find that taping the larger cutouts back into place braces the wood and protects it from breakage. It may be just me but I never use any softwood for fretwork projects because of the lack of wood strength especially with advanced patterns like the one you are cutting out. I try to cut strategically as well and make my large cutouts the last ones if I can also.One other thing that might help is to stay away from using spiral blades especially on hardwood I always use #1 FDUR and #3 FDUR blades and another tip is to use sharp blades all the time and the cuts are much easier. If you are trying to sand away with the saw blade and it jumps on you change the blade don't fight the cut.Blades are cheap and you don't want to have an issue of a breakout piece after investing many hours of time into a project over a dull blade. I know im going to probably get some flack over the spiral blade comment but IMO I find spiral blades are a pain to clamp in the blade chucks and they wander a fair bit too especially on hardwood. They do have their place from time to time on my work but the bulk of my cuts are done with straight blades. This might help thanks for reading.