Very small plug cutters

[gasman]

The smallest plug cutter I can find anywhere is 6mm.... which is still quite big for the fine decorative inlays I like to do. Apart from the Lie Nielsen dowel plate, which I do not find gives accurate enough results to use in decorative inlays, and hand cutting, which is very laborious, and turning in a lathe which has to be done producing an end grain dowel, does anyone know any other ways of getting 3 or 4 mm dowels / plugs
Thanks for any advice
Mark

 

[Paul Chapman]

I presume you want face-grain plugs. How about cutting a larger hole in a piece and using that as a template with a bearing-guided router cutter or, alternatively, using a router with a guide bush :-k

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[SVB]

Hi,

Given for inlay you will presumably only want small lengths turning cross grain may be an option.

How many are you after?

 

[gasman]

Kind of you to reply
I do quite a bit of box-making etc with complicated inlays on the top and would quite often like to use smaller 'dots' than I have - also things like the line and berry inlays which Steve Latta perfected. So a plug cutter would really be best - I have successfully turned cross-grain 4 mm plugs before but it was tricky and laborious - especially in coarse grained woods like zebrano.... and if there was an 'automated' solution like a plug cutter it would be best
Thanks anyway
Mark

 

[jasonB]

Could you not punch them out of veneer? If you don't want to buy a wad punch you can use a bit of tube with teh end chamfered to a cutting edge

You could also try teh leather drill punches that **** sell.

Jason

 

[ondablade]

Hi Gasman. As above i've had good luck making small discs while drilling holes in thin and soft woods using a piece of thin wall brass tube of the right diameter too.

In my case i've tended to make crude saw 'teeth' by making say 10 cuts on diameters with a junior hacksaw, and then using a needle file to clean the cutting faces and add some clearance behind the tips. (like a mini hole saw)

I started doing it to get a nice clean hole in woods that would splinter and tear using any normal sort of twist drill.

They work best in a pillar drill with plenty of speed and a very slow and careful feed. Not sure how brass would do on hardwood or thicker material, but i guess if you could get or machine up a bit of tube in the right steel you could easily harden it by heating and quenching it.

A good quality (hard to get - the type with a wheel with multiple sizes of punches on a pliers type deal is usually cheaply made and not precise or sharp enough) leather punch would probably pop out a disc in thin veneers too, although it never seemed to work all that reliably for me....

 

[Steve Maskery]

I think that there is a reason why the smallest plug cutter is 6mm.....

Face-grain cutting with a plug cutter relies on the strength of the grain to resist the torque of the cutter itself. The strength of this grain is going to reduce as a square of the change in radius. I think.

For face grain small discs I, too, suggest a decent punch. There are cheap ones available at the "market" stalls which appear at all the woody shows. A good thwack with a hammer and you should have no trouble getting disks 4 and 3mm diameter out of veener, even bandsawn veneer.

I'm trying to think what a 3mm disk of Zebrano would like. Presumably yellow or black but not both!

S

 

[gasman]

brilliant thanks i know exactly what you mean