Ivory Inlays By The Score

In switching my attentions to the top of the Anglo-Indian teak table, the primary focus was quite necessarily the dozens of missing diamond-shaped ivory inlays.  While these intarsia elements seemed identical at first glance, a second glance revealed they were only similar, not identical.  The angles were all the same but the dimensions were not.

I started by cutting some ivory piano keys into strips, then set up a sawing jig to turn the strips into diamonds.

Since each inlay was slightly different than the others I wound up touching the edges of each one with a file to get it to the right dimension.  Once that was done a put a drop of 192 Special hot hide glue into each recess and placed the replacement piece there.

For each missing floral element I traced the void onto polyester sheet, then copied that onto ivory by placing a piece of carbon paper between the polyester and the ivory and used a tracing stylus to make the transfer.

Then I sawed them out with my trusty Knew Products frame saw, trimmed them as necessary with a needle file, and glued them down the same way.

That left only the very thin filigree elements, which required thinking way outside the box.