Who doesn’t like dinosaurs?!  I wanted to make something involving a dinosaur fossil, but I wasn’t sure what.  I’ve also wanted to improve my wood inlaying skills.  When I saw a cool picture of a species of pterodactyl, I knew that was the project for me!  Yeah, yeah, I know the term pterodactyl isn’t exactly an animal, but a common description for flying reptiles.  And, yes, I know that it’s not exactly a dinosaur.  But I don’t care because it’s a dinosaur to me!

I took a picture of a pterodactyl skeleton and played with it in Photoshop and Illustrator to make vector drawings.  These are a great starting point for making the fossil parts on the CNC, and they can then be shaped with hand tools.  I cut the parts from a piece of maple that I milled when I cut up a tree.  You can check out the video of me milling the tree here.

The best way to get the fossil to visually pop is to put it against a contrasting wood.  I glued up a large panel from walnut that will serve as the base for me to inlay the bones.  At this point in the build, I wasn’t sure what shape I wanted the walnut, ultimately.  I made it oversized so I had some options later.

Inlaying the bones was a major challenge for me.  This is the most complex inlay project I’ve tackled and the multiple small, curved bones were tricky.  I used a variety of tools to do the inlay.  I started by using double sided tape to stick the bone onto the board.  I used a marking knife to trace around the bone and then chisels to shape the sides and remove most of the waste.  Lastly, I used a Dremel and palm router to ensure the depth was the same and to remove wood for the large pieces.  A major help was my Dremel router base from Stew Mac. That thing is pretty awesome! The pieces were glued into place, but left just proud of the surface. I wanted the bones to look like they were coming out of the ground.  To help drive home that look, I used chisels and sandpaper to shape the bones after they were inlayed.  I estimate that I spent about 20 hours on the inlay process.

After the fossil was inlayed, I could see that the walnut board needed to be shaped to look like a stone.  The fossil itself is about 20”x20”.  I drew a stone-like shape around it and cut it out on the bandsaw.  To me, the rougher the better so it looks natural and not machine cut.

I spent a lot of time sanding everything with 120 grit sandpaper.  Usually, I sand projects to at least 180 grit, but I felt like sanding it higher than 120 would take away from what I was envisioning.  Instead, I chose to scrape the entire project with steel brushes.  They gave the bones and wood a cool texture. 

Spraying a finish is probably the best bet for a project like this; however, it’s snowing and too cold outside to spray.  Instead, I opted for Osmo Oil.  A hardwax finish will give it the protection it needs without being too shinny.  It seems like the fossil should have a dull look.

Overall, I’m very happy with how it turned out.  It was a heck of a project.  I gained a ton of experience cutting inlay and I hope to put those new skills to use on some future builds.

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