We visited a local lumber mill to source the walnut. We ended up buying a MASSIVE slab. We considered buying smaller pieces and joining them together or buying pre-made walnut butcher block but the price was going to be similar for a worse result. The slab we bought is 12 feet long, 1.5" thick and 23" wide at the widest point. The entire piece is not suitable for plaques due to a split on one end and some large knots.

We used print outs to figure out how to fit our plaques into the walnut slab

We used our tiny shopbot CNC router to plane the slabs, cut the shape of the plaques, and round over the edge. We also drilled holes for the nameplates screws

meanwhile we made a baby one as a test of the whole inlay process prior to trying to make a big one. we couldn't afford to mess up a giant slab of walnut

OK back to the main event, We lasercut the inlays from maple veneer. We used paper-backed because these and giant and fragile

we laser engrave a matching pocket on the walnut plaque for the maple piece to go into

then we have to apply glue to the veneer and hammer it into the plaque. This part is tricky and has to be done fast

sometimes this didn't go too well and we had to remove the whole thing with dental picks

we ended up doing the whole process with masking on the wood for the second two plaques (which we had to sand off)

After we sanded the inlayed plaques, we had to seal them. We used osmo polyx oil

Next we added the nameplates, each is a different shape. They were cut from aluminum via fiber laser and anodized black. We attached them with teeny tiny screws

Here’s the final result!