Once again, I went for some more of that curly spalted maple offcut. I spent some time seeing if I could figure out how to make my own tooling from a spare card scraper, my my first attemps to cut down hardened stock were a pretty big failure. I picked up the L-N cutters, since they’re only $15 and appropriately sized already, and went to town.
This is by far the simplest tool in the batch. Really, its just a block of wood with 2 cuts, 2 rabbets, and 4 screws.
I didn’t think to actually take a live action photo of the uncut wood. I’m sure you’ve seen curly maple before! I put the two cuts in that I’ll be pulling the inlay through, and lined up the cutters to verify the size of the rabbet.
Then I lined up the cutters, with extra deep holes.
Recessed the holes, remounted the cutters, and cut a fairly simple and rough mortise, for clamping the block to the benchtop.
That is really all there is to it!
3 comments so far
Gpops
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248 posts in 4782 days
#1 posted 09-22-2009 05:51 AM
Thanks for the info and pictures. I am off to purchase some L-N cutters and give the manufacturing of the tools a try, thanks to you. Been putting off inlaying for too long….
Rickterscale
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167 posts in 3698 days
#2 posted 02-28-2012 07:11 PM
Great blog series. Do you have dimensions you can share with others interested in making these tools?
Jon3
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#3 posted 02-28-2012 07:48 PM
I don’t have dimensions. You could use the lie nielsen ones, as they sell all of these now. But more importantly, I think you would have the best results by sizing them to fit your hands. You want to have enough bulk so you can grasp it comfortably, but still maneuver and control it well.
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