I’ve been working on a project to learn how to inlay tile into wood. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the best way to do it, but here’s what I did.
First, I marked off the area where the inlay would go and cut the edges with a utility knife.
Then I used a router to take out most of the wood in the inlay area (but didn’t go all the way to the edge).
Next I used a chisel to remove the rest of the wood to the edge. This still left a fair amount of rough wood though, so after that I used a Dremel to take out more.
Finally, I sanded it out, stained and varnished. Here’s the final product:
It was a lot of work, and the results aren’t perfect, but like most things, I’ll probably get better as I do more of this.
Beautiful work!
You might save time by making a cutout frame as a pattern, especially if you plan several similar designs, and then use that to rout (with a bit with a guide bearing) your clean perimeter. That should leave you with just the corners to chisel.
I thought about that, but on something as small as this, I couldn’t figure out how to clamp it down so it didn’t move.