Crossgrain

[mostlycold]

I’m putting a diamond feature ring together and wish to separate each segment with a 1/8” ebony spacer. If I glue in the spacers in the face grain to end grain orientation, is there enough wood movement to be problematic? Reason I ask is the feature ring height is twice the width of my ebony stock and to match grain, I’d have glue up a small face board to achieve the height I need.

 

[mfisher]

I know ebony is not cheap, but why not purchase a new ebony board which can be machined to 1/8 x needed height?
If you are having to glue up the ebony to get the correct height, would that produce a horizontal line (gap) in your spacer?
If you were gluing up the ebony spacer to get the proper width that line would be hidden.

imo, 1/8 spacers should not be a problem in wood movement.

 

[mostlycold]

Thanks for the info. Normally I’d agree about cutting a bigger piece. About 30 years ago I picked up a full box of ebony pen blanks and I don’t make pens. I have an accu-slice jig for my bandsaw for slicing the blanks to 1/8”, so I figured this would be a good way to use them. So, if I don’t have to worry about wood movement, I can wrap 2 sides of my diamond segments with the long grain and space all of them with the end grain pieces.