Inlay Knives

[Sand Paper]

So i found a set of inlay knives at work that we bought a long time ago and i forgot we had. Do any of you guys use inlay knives or mostly just the dremel bits? I'm rather excited because i've always been better using blades to carve small detail rather than the dremel.

[Mattia]

What the heck's an inlay kinfe? If you mean engraver, yes, it's useful for engraving after inlaying. You cut with a handsaw (jeweller's saw), route the cavities with a dremel (or a chisel, if you want hand tools) and engrave by hand with an engraver.

[manquesa]

well I don't remember who it was, but someone here recently did some really nice inlay work using an exacto knife kit as opposed to the router method. It was really good clean work from what I remember. Got me thinking about maybe trying it sometime.

[Sand Paper]

Me being the semi-idiot that i am, i may have found some really fine carving knives and thought they were for inlay work. Regardless, these things are all different shapes: some hook shapes, exacto looking ones, chisel shapes, etc. They're all razor sharp which leads me to believe that they're for inlay work. They dont look like they're made to remove much material but rather to cut away sections of wood with extreme prescision. I'm not sure what they're for but they would sure make inlays a lot easier.

[Mattia]

Probably just micro-carving tools/chisels. Has nothing to do with inlay as such.

Inlay requires a vertical cut out cavity, which requires, essentially, a chisel or a router. No need for a wide variety of shapes. Fine detail carving/faceting (think modelmaking) does.