How do I cut 1/8 and 1/4 inch dots for inlay?

[Nelson Howe]

I'm doing legs with inlays. I can make dowels with my dowel plate and fill holes with them, but I would prefer not to have end grain. I thought about buying the right sized tubing, sharpening it and hammering it into the material. But my material will be at least 1/8 inch thick. Seems like that might be a challenge with the tubing. Plus, getting the dots out of the tubing...

Nelson

[Loren Woirhaye]

Wood dots? Punch them out of thin stock with leatherworking punches. You can cut squares then use the punch to trim to round.

[Tony Leonard]

Steve Latta uses tubing, but files sawteeth on the end and cuts the wood instead of pounding it. You can probbaly find an article/video at FWW. He also showed the method in his videos and on The Woodright's shop. I tried punching once and it didn't work well for me.

Tony

[Larry Fox]

Does it have to be wood? If not, you might be able to use the stuff that guys building guitar necks use to make the clay dots you see on the necks of guitars. You could make a template to make the inlay using the same bit you use to drill the hole and (in theory) it should yield an exact match. If you are using something around the same size and you can get away with round you might even be able to buy them from StewMac.

[Bob Vavricka]

They make a 1/4" plug cutter that will cut face grain plugs. I don't think I have ever seen one as small as 1/8"

[Loren Woirhaye]

Another way to do it is punch the dots from veneer, glue them to the ends of dowels, then push the dowels into the hole until the veneer face is flush. Seems easy to me. I've used white plastic hairbrush bristles for guitar side dots, just sticking them in the hole and trimming them flush.

[Matt Day]

I haven't used them yet, but I had a skin biopsy a few years ago and the punch tool they use would (I think) be perfect for veneer patching. Google punch biopsy tool. They come in different sizes.

[Chris Padilla]

In an inlay/marquetry class I took recently, we simply chucked a metal tube into a drill press and while spinning, shaved the inner diameter down with a knife or file. You can get it pretty sharp however we weren't punching out 1/8" material...we were doing ~1/42" veneer material. That is how I did the eye in the turtle inlay I made.

Chris Padilla's marquetry Turtle.jpg

[jack forsberg]

would this work

http://www.veritastools.com/Products/Page.aspx?p=152

[Lee Schierer]

Here are some ready made dot cutters. Cut your dot and then push if out from the back with a small dowel.

[Nelson Howe]

Thanks guys. Some good ideas. I think I'll try to grind some teeth in some tubing and put it in the drill press. I want to be able to keep the dots pretty thick.

Nelson.