So glad you asked,

I am going to inlay the designs by cutting around them first with an Exacto knife and then carefully removing a very thin layer of wood with a very sharp chisel... VERY sharp. You do have to be careful doing this, but the board I'm inlaying in is plywood, and that is much easier than trying to do it on a solid board. you can actually remove just one layer of the ply if that layer is the same thickness as the inlay. Then you just sand to flush out any high areas.

The compass rose is a copy of one that is on the bar at the restaraunt where the person I'm giving this to works. They did not inlay, but rather overlaid and feathered the edges, then they filled the bar with clear epoxy over the top. it looks good, but you can still see the edges. For this instrument I am definately going to inlay because there is nothing to fill with, and it just wouldn't look right if it wasn't flush.

I did do a test inlay on my kayak by laying out some sacrificial strips and doing an inlay. I ended up not doing the inlay, but it did work fine. You just have to be real careful and very conscious of the grain of the wood that you are inlaying into. The chisel will tend to dig into the wood. You have to hold the chisel with both hands and guide the blade at a very flat angle so that it does not dig in. The key is to score around the inlay with an Exacto knife first so that you get a good clean edge. If it's not perfect in the middle the glue will fill in a bit, and the sanding will flush it out. (To a certain degree, that is.) I know a lot of folks use Dremel tools, and maybe I should as well, but I like doing things the hard way!

-Malcolm