Compass Rose table top – Jake & Eddie’s Excellent Adventure 😎🐶

Celebrating ten years back home at 28° 19′ N by 80° 36′ W!

This year marks my tenth anniversary of returning home. It’s mind-boggling, really, that it’s been that long, but then again, it’s pretty hard to believe that next year will mark my seventh year of existence here on Mother Earth.

As noted elsewhere, I developed a passion for woodworking early. In my first ‘garage/shop’ in Washington, I proudly displayed a hand-lettered sign that said:

He With The Most Toys Wins!

When I moved to Germany in 1987, I closed shop until my return three years later. I had moved back to Colorado and was living the dream, traveling around the world and working at Hewlett-Packard’s corporate machine. I outfitted my basement as my first dedicated woodworking shop with new stationary tools. There was an excellent lumber store in Fort Collins. I used our most excellent 2D CAD system—ME 10—and started designing and building the furniture for my new home in the Rockies.

CAD drawing for Teak Stereo Cabinet circa 1993

For a while, I thought Colorado might be my new home. I liked it there. Unfortunately, the job was changing fast, and I found myself on the outside looking in. In a stunning display of madness, I made a sharp right turn and ended up in Atlanta for nearly 19 years. The last 15 years were spent as a different version of myself, constantly at odds with the part I left on the left coast.

When I finally escaped the madness, I ended up back where it started: Cocoa Beach. I was home and have now lived here longer than anywhere else. I had envisioned this day for decades, which was one reason I moved to the Southeast in the mid-1990s. After I retired in 2020, I built a dedicated shop in my backyard.

Before I escaped, I had to refinish that first piece of furniture that I built for myself (and still owned). I screwed up and sanded through the teak veneer while refinishing it. After moving back, I had an idea to replace the top with a compass rose with the position of Cocoa Beach on it. It was on my list for over ten years before I acted.

When I first saw the Shaper Origin router demonstrated several years ago, it showed a craftsman using it to inlay a compass rose on a hardwood floor. That is precisely what I was looking for! My comments concerning this incredible tool are elsewhere.

Build

AutoCAD design sans lettering. I used this for the individual segments.

I created the base layout using AutoCAD, imported it into Shaper Studio, and added the lettering.

My idea was to use walnut and maple for the rose pieces and zebrawood for the ring segments. The background would be quarter-sawn mahogany, and the lettering would be maple.

The lettering capabilities had recently been upgraded, and I found a simple letter font that worked well for inlay. There is no lettering on a curve capability yet, but manually rotating the letters worked well enough.

**Shaper Studio.** The base design was imported as a DXF. The lettering was added using the Text feature. The interior parts of the rose (not shown here) were cut out separately.

I quickly learned that paying attention to the jig used to lay out the optical tape for the router pays off. I try to keep everything coplanar and provide surfaces for moving the tape smoothly. Once a good set of markers is established, I am always stunned at the router’s accuracy and repeatability.

**Routing layout.** The mahogany veneer is glued to 1/8 inch baltic birch and is held securely with screws and double-sided tape. The additional panels on top and bottom have been adjusted to be approximately co-planer with the work. Everything is screwed or taped onto the 1/2-inch MDF underlayment. Optical tape is applied every three inches.

The first step is to cut the main layout, which is cut precisely as designed. Offset is added when cutting the ‘puzzle’ pieces to facilitate assembly.

**Cutting the main layout.** The display is zoomed out to show the entire work area. Everything was aligned visually against reference points on the veneer.

**Completed cutout.** The only adjustments needed are to cut the ‘points’ when the inlaid pieces are added.

Double-sided tape keeps the pieces in place, and the through cuts are made. The cut pieces are easily removed by gently lifting them with a small, smooth pry bar.

The next step was to cut out the interior pieces. I used the Shaper Workstation to do this. I learned that adding about 0.005″ inch offset to make these pieces undersized made for easy placement with no sacrifice in appearance.

**Interior pieces** are cut out quickly using the Shaper Workstation.

**Final Layout.** I cut out 12 Zebrawood ring segments so the grain ran roughly parallel to the radial lines. The final result was exquisite.

The next step was new for me and involved cutting the letters directly out of 0.030″ wood veneer with a paper backing. The letters were small, too, especially some of the symbols. I held the veneer with double-sided tape and cut the letters to size. I was impressed at how resilient the cut letters were when removing them from the tape and cleaning the edges. It was much easier than I anticipated.

**Inlaying the lettering.** I used the Shaper Plate to cut a slightly oversized pocket to glue the cut letters. A 0.008-inch offset was about correct for the thinner veneer.

The final step was to add the coordinates. I used the original larger design to facilitate cutting the pockets for the individual letters. I was impressed with how accurately I could set up the tool paths using visual references.

**Adding the coordinates**: I returned to the larger cutter layout to apply the smaller coordinate letters. I used the N letter to visually align the layout of the work. Again, I was impressed at the tool’s accuracy, as the letters aligned perfectly with the original design.

**Inlaying work done.** Coordinates were added to the ring.

Cutting the slightly smaller letters, including the small degree and minute symbol, was no problem. I glued each one in as I cut them. This was, again, much easier than I anticipated.