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I've got a $100 Lowe's gift card burning a hole in my pocket and have a stewmac herringbone rosette that I want to inlay in my newest build. I'm considering on blowing the gift card on a cheap drill press but seeing the price of the LMI jig has given me pause. Is there a way to make a similar jig or should I just buy a new grill?

I use a router with a circle cutter and a few sizes of end mills. Unless you want to make many copies of the same rosette patterns, you could probably have five or six tops routed before you set that tool up.

With that 100 Lowe's card you could probably get a dremel with the circle cuter.

If you don't have a laminate trimmer, you could pick one of them up. Then you could do what I did and build a circle cutting jig for the laminate trimmer using Chris Paulick's YouTube tutorial. I would post a link but wasn't sure if it would be ok. Look up Chris' name and precision router base, should get you there. I think I spent about $15 on the base.

Neil,
I use a dremel with circle cutter with very good success to do my rosette routing. I also have the plunge router base for the dremel that I'm going to try next time. Do you already have a dremel?

Kevin

Yes, I have a Dremel 300 and bought the plunge router base but I don't have a circle cutter or good bits to do inlay. The thing that caught my eye about the LMI jig is that you can rout several rings at once and the rosette I want to inlay has 3 rings.

I know it's probably more money than it's worth. My Martin D-16GT has the same rosette so I could just measure it and use a popsicle stick with an exacto blade but I'm lazy...;^)

drill holes in the plunge base at appropriate distances from the center point.

that gift card would turn into a bunch of clamps if i had it. :)

LOL, thanks guys, you talked me out of it like I hoped you would! I think I may just save the gift card for a playground set for my kids. In the meantime I'll measure my Martin's rosette and probably ask a friend if I can use his circle cutter.

Neil,
One of our members is Sylvan Wells who collaborated on one of the best circle cutting jigs there is.
http://www.wellsguitars.com/Available_I ... Tools.html

Wow, that is a great price for a precision piece.
I might have to save up for one of those.

Kevin

Update: I purchased the Dremel brand router base and it came with a rudimentary circle jig. It has a minimum radius based on the size of the router base that is too large to do a sound hole or the inner ring for a Stew Mac herringbone rosette but big enough for everything else. It's good enough to do the hard part I guess but I think I may have to drill a couple of holes in the base for the smaller stuff.