Hi all, I recently bought an antique coin cabinet with some lovely trays in it. However the insets are a bit too small and I’d like to have them widened in diameter from 22mm to 28mm.
I haven’t a clue how to go about this or who to ask and wondered if someone here could help me with this or knows someone that can.
Thanks in advance
Seems like it might be a good job for the big CNC, you could program in the size & layout of the holes you want & have it slightly enlarged the existing ones to whatever size you want
Have you got a photo of the full tray insert?
Yes I had heard that a CNC might be a good way to go about it. But I’ve never seen one before let alone know how to work it 
Do you think this is something a carpenter would be able to do?
In terms of pictures that’s all I have, but I could take some more of there’s something specific you’d like to see. Each of the holes has a central pilot hole under the red felt as pictured.
Sorry if I’m not making a lot of sense, I have autism and my brain gets a bit confused when learning new things.
Thank you for replying 
Haha that’s fair enough, they’re definitely not the first tool that most people think of when they think about woodworking
If you want to keep it simple I’d use a forstner bit, basically a wide shallow drill bit for large circular holes - I’d imagine that’s what was probably used to make it in the first place.
A carpenter could definitely handle this, or if you have time to wait for a woodshop induction you could do it on the pillar drill (we have some forstner bits)
No prob at all 
Forstener bits are driven by their centre and have a sharp tip that keeps them positioned. They don’t work too well as is to enlarge an existing hole, the bit will have a tendency to wander.
There are tricks you can use to work around this, eg.
CNC would well as long as you align it correctly to the XY axis.
Are the trays just a flat piece of wood with holes or is there more to them? If it is the former then it honestly might be easiest to just make new ones from scratch with the right hole sizes.
Make a template on the laser. Use a profile bit with a hand router.
Keep Smiling
D
Here’s the laser workflow if you want to use hand router and laser combo. I would suggest using no less than 5mm thick material for your templates because the profiling wheel needs at least that for best practice. It doesn’t have to be plastic it can be ply.
If you are using plastic, offset the z-axis by half the thickness of the material… eg. 5mm material, offset to -2.5mm [thats negative]. It gives you the best opportunity for better 90° cuts insted of leaving a slight burr.
Make a disc that is the size of your starting diameter, the hole you already have.
Make a disc that is the diameter of the hole you want.
With each of these discs, put an 8mm hole dead centre.
Next we make the plate that you use as the router giude. So I would suggest 4" square plate with a circle cutout dead centre thats the diameter of the hole size your aiming for.
Insert the small disc into the small hole, add an 8mm dowell.
Put the large diameter disc on the dowell.
Get the large 4" plate with the large diamter hole, and place with tape to hold it secure.
Remove the two discs with the dowel.
The 4" square plate remians stuck down so that you can use a profile bit to enlarge your hole with a hand router.
I guess this would be a far superior finish than tyring at the drill press with a forstner bit.
It negates any alignment problems on the CNC, because you are going to make the discs fit well and adress each hole at a time with precisely the same tooling that you just made, the 4" square template.
Enjoy!
Keep Smiling
D
I would really enjoy taking this project on as a Maker Friend if you would like that let me know.
I have acess to all the tools and can show you how it goes at a pace that we can find that suits you. 
Keep Smiling
D
That’s a wonderfully kind offer and would love to take you up on it.
I’ll sign up for an induction and perhaps we can discuss a date for us to get together and make a go of it.
I am indeed smiling now
Many thanks,
Jadon
Happy to help guide you through the steps and build up your confidence for the hand router so that you can do it yourself and you can then claim to have done some carpentry!
If you get the basic woodshop induction completed and also get the router induction done, it would then be a joy to get you to practice on some scrap pieces before we commint to what looks like a nice piece of oak.
The felt bottom will have to come out before we router. Ill check if felt can be cut on the laser @lasertechs for your new felt bottoms.
I’ll do the design in illustrator and show you the workflow of design to cut with the laser.
Ill be available from Monday onwards. I dont mind mornings, afternoon or evening. We will have some fun template routering.
Keep Smiling
D
All good to cut felt on the laser. Just be cautious and keep the power as low as possible to avoid burning the felt/flaming.
Thank you, Charles.
Keep Smiling
D
Yes all the felt can come out quite easily and I’ll need to replace it anyway to match the updated size. So hopefully it won’t prove too much of an issue.
I’m planning to come to the open evening on the 27th so hopefully can meet a few of you in person if you’ll be around
Many thanks,
Jadon
I’ll put it in my calendar and we can start from there, Open Evening. A great way to start.
Keep Smiling
D
