The Infinity Heart

The Infinity Heart was a gift for my wife, and I wanted to encourage others to build it for their loved ones. The outer hearts and support are made out of Mahogany and the center heart is made from Purple Heart, and the base is made from laminated Pine.

Using a jig to get a clean edge on the Mahogany before I resaw it on the bandsaw

This step is optional if you are starting with 1/4" Stock already.

The picture shows me scribing a line on the long grain of the board. I resawed 2 pieces from this block each about 1/4: thick

Slow and steady with the resaw, make sure that you have a sharp blade to minimize the amount of burning and saw marks. I put the pieces through the planer to make sure that they had a uniform thickness, but do not have a picture of that step.

I created a heart template in Illustrator that I will use to cut out the hearts on the scroll saw

You only need to cut out half the shape through both 1/4" pieces at the same time and then bookmatch them open

I started cutting from the outermost ring first, although someone advised that it might be better to work from the inside out

This was my first time on the scroll saw, so my lines were a little shaky, but this is about how it should look at this stage. I was able to get a pretty thin kerf using the scroll saw, but this can also be completed on a bandsaw.

If you were able to make clean cuts on the scroll saw, you will only have to use the sander to round over the pieces, otherwise sand until there is a fairly even transition between the rings of the heart

This is pretty close to the final form of all of the hearts. I did a little more sanding after this stage in order to make the spacing a little more uniform so that they would turn within each other.

Once all the sanding was done, I used a little wood glue and some light manual pressure to attach each heart.

Try to clean as you for the glue up. It will be more difficult later on and it would be best to avoid staining the wood

The center of the heart should be slightly thicker than the outer hearts, so I stacked 2 1/4" pieces of Purple Heart and glued them as a small block so the measurement is close to 3/8" when sanded and finished.

This part is pretty critical since each hole needs to be drilled as close to center as possible and could only drill 1 heart at a time, hoping they all lined up correctly at the end.

In order to do the bent lamination that hold the heart, you need to cut 2 thin strips of wood. I am using Mahogany, but Oak could work as well.

I used this bucket filled up with enough water to cover the wood and let it soak for about 20 minutes. I do not have a steam set up, so this was my alternative.

This is the jig I used to bend the wood. I sketched out the shape and took some general measurements to make sure that I was set up for the correct angle for the final product.

With the wood soaked, it should bend pretty easily, but plan on bending it farther than initially needed since the wood will naturally spring back a little.

Once the wood is dry, I sketched out a rounded shape and cut it out on the bandsaw

After being bent and cut out on the bandsaw, it's ready for some finish and the final installation that is held in with 5 minute epoxy

These boards are going to make up the base and help elevate the heart above the surface that its sitting on

Sand the base and lightly chamfer the edges

I painted the base with a black latex paint, but applied it with a cloth and wiped off the execess to keep the look of the grain

The final assembly consists of chiseling out a slot for the heart support and drilling a small mounting hole for the wire that runs through the heart.