In keeping with the more subdued look of my first Dryad dreadnought I choose Red Jasper for the center ring:
Jasper is about at the hardness limit that I am tooled up for. As you can see I selected some stones with veins of quartz which is even harder but I want the added character:
I find the best way for now for me to make these stone rosettes is to completely make the rosette before inlaying it into the soundboard. This is because when sanding the stone the sand coming off of it destroys the softwood tonewood. So I inlay the finished rosette about .005" deeper than the soundboard surface and then once it is set I bring the soundboard surface down to the rosette level.
This also gives me the opportunity to really see how it will look before committing to inlaying it:
And in she goes!
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