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Here's one way to do it.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the video. Where did you get your foot switch?

Thanks,
Max

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Max Bishop
Brighton, Michigan

That`s pretty slick, Chris.
I`ve been contemplating something very similar, the only real difference is that I have it planned to drill the holes in the beans before routing, which would mean having to index them.
BTW, Great idea with the mesh over the vacuum hose to catch those little pieces!
Cheers,
Coe

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Give me 50 cents worth of regular.
Check my oil too, if you don`t mind,,,

I'm not too sure where that foot switch came from, might be StewMac or Woodcraft. I also get some from HF.
I the idea of putting the drill bit in the original hole was to aline the button square to the template . I'm planning on making face radiusing jig by routing the inlay cavity of the button in a piece of wood and use it as both a drill guide and face radiusing jig. I might drill the hole and then use the post hole to pin it in as it's face is sanded and then flip it around and pin it again and face the other side. Does that make any sense?
I think this method is fairly simple and just involves making the template and a set of jaws. If you knotice on my jaws I first tried an other method of routing half depth and flipping the piece over and putting it into a routed cavity that was the shape of the bean that the vise would clamp too. Then flip the template over and route the second half. But it ended up not working to good and alinement became a bit difficult. It ended up that I was just making it harder then it needed to be and was over thinking it. Much easier to just add a 1/16" to the thickness and cut it off like they have been doing for years with the dutchman patch. One could take this simple idea and turn it into dedicated jig if they want. Like making some jigs for sizing the stock or something to remove the waste. There are different ways to skin the cat. Or you can keep it simple. It depends on what you want to do with it. My hope is to just give you some ideas that you can run with. The one important thing is to have a good plunge router with no runout and a Inlay kit.
I use that mess over the vacuum hose idea when cutting inlay pieces so that the pieces don't get sucked up into the vacuum. Old panty hose makes a good filter too.

Here's the prototype shaft drilling and face sanding jig. I'll be adding a drill bushing when it arrives and also 2 set screws to the bean recess so I can tweak the way the bean seats especially when sanding the second side. Keep it mind these jigs are all just prototypes and can be improved apon as I hope anyone who wants to try this method will do.
First off is that copying and making the template lay out the bean/button taking the time to mark the centerline of the shaft hole and make the bean square to the template edge as this will make building the other jigs easier. If I decide to make another set of jigs I'll re do my template and refine the jigs for sure. I'm hoping this will plant a seed in your design.