Ebony inlay substitutes.

[recipio]

Folks, I like to make small circular tables with a black inlay about 30 cms in diameter. So far i have used solid ebony about 3 mm square but it is brittle stuff and not easy to bend to that radius, Does anybody use black hot melt glue for inlay lines. ? I've seen one hot melt system with it's own blade for scraping off excess and aluminium block but it is about £ 350.
Likewise using shellac sticks would be very pricey. Any suggestions welcome.

 

[Inspector]

A couple suggestions.

Casting epoxy, dyed black.

Dye a less expensive wood like Maple and then inlay it as you would the Ebony.

Pete

 

[niall Y]

Would African Blackwood perform better?

 

[recipio]

Thanks all. Somehow using a chemical product goes against the grain - it doesn;' feel ' right ' in fine furniture. African blackwood is also very brittle. I have some Wenge so I'll give that a go next time.

 

[BCS1980UK]

It might be a long shot but have you considered guitar binding?

 

[graham88]

+1 for guitar binding.

 

[Ollie78]

The hot melt glue filler (polyamide i think it is) is good and ,may work for your purpose.
I will say there are a couple of ussue to be aware of.
Because it is a meltable product it will melt again once aplied, so if you are belt sanding over a patch you have to be pretty careful not to heat it up too much or it can go soft.
It is not designed to be highly polished and prefers being cut or planed with a very sharp blade rather than sanded.

 

[Cabinetman]

I would think, though I haven’t done exactly this, that a 3mm square inlay pulled slowly through boiling water then gently placed inside a bucket or similar to dry would be much easier to inlay into your tables,
Ian
Ps, if you decide to stain another wood probably best do it after the boiling water lol.

 

[TRITON]

African blackwood is also very brittle

Im not sure it is actually. African blackwood is the timber used in musical instrument production, for mouthpieces in clarinets,oboes, bagpipes etc etc So its going to be robust enough for that, and mouthpieces are in parts quite thin.
I've a few really top class bits, and i like it for its finer grain over ebony. Smoother, cleaner, polishes amazingly