Recently, the warm glint of brass inlay has been showing up all over ? on wooden dressers, cut into marble jewelry boxes, curving through intricate handmade tiles. And like any eye-catching trend, after spotting it at our favorite shops around town, our ?Hey, we should try to make that!? attitude tempted us to try out the […]

Recently, the warm glint of brass inlay has been showing up all over ? on wooden dressers, cut into marble jewelry boxes, curving through intricate handmade tiles. And like any eye-catching trend, after spotting it at our favorite shops around town, our ?Hey, we should try to make that!? attitude tempted us to try out the technique for ourselves. However, the process for inlaying brass into wood can be complicated (not to mention, expensive).
Inlay is the art of filling a cavity with a contrasting material (in this case, brass into wood), and creating the intricate designs often calls for specialized tools like a router or laser cutter. But to make the technique much easier, we developed a method that doesn?t require anything fancier than a power drill and some materials from the hardware store. Just start with a store-bought wooden serving board, or even grab the one already sitting on your kitchen counter. Then, get creative: Swap in a piece of brass tubing from the hardware store in place of a standard drill bit and use it to carve out the cavities in a celestial-inspired design. Fill each ring with a thin slice of brass tubing. A coating o...