Hello all,
I'm new here and I have a singular purpose. I am a hobby woodworker and am getting into string inlay. this is a process where you create a thin channel in your wood and embed a thin 'string' of contrasting wood. See below.
patterns are fairly easy. Characters are not so easy. the example above was done ad-hoc by a fellow named Steve Latta who is an acknowledged master of string inlay. He basically messed around with special cutters that slice the two sides of the channel at once. His tools amount to a straightedge and a compass. I've seen him do this and he works by eye on every character in every project.
Cutting inlay with a CNC router would be childs play. But what if you don't have the $3K for a minimal system? It occurs to me that it should be possible to create a font that is not the letter or number but the instructions for making the letter or number. It would include lines, center points, vertices and such. I've seen plenty of drawings of a Roman character. What I have never seen is a whole font of those drawings.
Am I making sense? Any thoughts or suggestions? If anyone out there in the typography world would like to make such a font, I have little doubt that it could be sold.
Finally, being new to this forum, please forgive me if I've posted to the wrong place. Feel free to move this topic to where it belongs.
Comments
This is surely an interesting topic, though I’m not confident that I understand your technical proposal right away. Maybe you’d like to illucidate by one or two sketches?
I myself, though being a type and font man mainly, have some experience with hand work in a similar field (attached: the mould made for a bronze cast).
The inlay isn't a string but is a contrasting wood. The term "string inlay" is just something the craft calls it.
http://www.pbs.org/video/the-woodwrights-shop-inlaid-lettering-with-steve-latta/
@RogerFeeley
CNC fonts for stroke based work can be a surprising headache. The machines want path-based instructions they can follow from point A to point B. Regular fonts don't actually work this way, instead they define an outline, so point A to point B and so on... but the font always needs to return to point A to complete the outline. This works for outlining an area, but not so much for single stroke forms.
Do you really need the calligraphic stroke models (i.e.: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/79/eb/9c/79eb9c57d931f9e6e5e615f6b7916dac.jpg)? Couldn't you just use any thin stroke-ish font as a model and just carbon transfer, pounce, trace, stencil those forms to your work?
Lets imagine the upper case I in a Roman font. We can think of it as one vertical rectangle, two horizontal rectangles, and four arcs. To do all that with string inlay, the rectangles are self evident. To do the arcs, you need the center points and the points where they meet the straight lines so you don’t overshoot.
Transferring a design to wood is fairly straightforward. You can adhere the design to the wood with spray adhesive or you can print in reverse using a laser jet and us a hot iron for the transfer.
ive seen images of single Roman characters with the centers and stuff left in. That’s what gave me the idea.
In most of the common font editors should be capable of being adapted into converting and approximating cubic / quadratic splines to straight line segments and circular arcs. Splines are specified by the location of the spline control points, whereas circular arcs are specified by the end points and the centre of the arc. (i.e. different kind of control points)
This is because, at least for traditional (non-machine guarded) wood cutting, one can only either cut in straight lines or part of a circular arc, but not any arbitrary curvy line.
Or maybe it's DWG that's more human readable and not DXF?
Here is something like I want. But it needs to be very simple. The Z is an excellent example but the font would need to provide the center points for the arcs. the S just looks scary!
the inlay might be the outline of the character in which case the letters below are very close. Some folks make the lines very thin and then add serifs.
If you're working by hand, how are you cutting your curves? If you're using gouges, à la Mr. Latta, you're going to be stuck with a limited number of radii or curve profiles. And you're working with physical things, so your reference letters would need to be drawn for a specific size. Imagine a capital I drawn at a 1" cap height with 1/8" radius serifs. Now scale that up 10%. Now you need a gouge for 0.1375" radius serif.
I'm on my big computer with a better keyboard. Since I retired in March, that doesn't happen much (can't say I'm unhappy about it).
As posted above, my only tools are the equivalent of a compass and straightedge.
String does refer to very thin slivers of contrasting wood. the grooves cut are perhaps a 1/16" deep and sometimes about a 1/16" wide. Sometimes the string is flexible enough to follow a curve. Many times, the tiny wood strip is bent over a heat source to shape and then trimmed. Serifs are hand cut triangles set into laboriously chiseled out hollow.
Traditional string inlay is done entirely by hand. Tools such as those from Lee Valley, do have double cutters that make things a lot easier.
Watching the videos by Steve Latta, it was pretty obvious to me that he re-invents the characters for every project and, to my programmers mind, that seemed wasteful. In some cases such customization makes sense. For instance when you have a three character monogram set into a diamond shape, the letters on the left and right are misshapen to follow the diamond. But, if you do it all the time (I don't), it might be expedient to have a left, center and right monogram font.
based on the posts above and an email exchange, I am thinking that a font just isn't the way to go. Maybe I would be better off drawing each letter that I want into a PDF file and then enlarging or reducing as needed.
Unlike a drawing of just the character, my drawings would include the center points for radii and vertices where arc meet other arcs or straight lines. Something like this:
So I would print this off on paper and adhere it to the wood. Keep in mind that these things are usually several inches high. You don't string inlay a lot of text unless you are glutton for punishment.
Again, thanks to all for the great comments and suggestions. Not to beat a dead horse, but my original font idea was to render the 'Y' above as seen above with all those circles and other directions for drawing.
I did a search a while back and found, "
A Constructed Roman Alphabet: A Geometric Analysis of the Greek and Roman Capitals and of the Arabic numerals"
by David Lance Goines. I can't find much about the contents of the book. Would that be what I'm looking for?
Simple is better. Just sayin'
Way too complicated. But you get the idea.