Steve, here is pretty much the song and dance routine. I cut and drill 4 or ever how many I need for the pattern blanks. I have made TBC bushings that fit the drilled holes and use them to turn all of the blanks to the same size on a metal lathe. When I designed the pattern, it is drawn as if there are no border between adjoining pieces and sized so that the pattern will fit seamlessly around a 2" circumference(the Y axis). Then the pattern is stretched lengthwise to fit the tube on the X axis. My rotary is made such that a 2" line on the Y axis of the drawing yields 360 degrees of rotation (exactly, everytime). Then I determine how thick I want the grid that separates the inlays that make up the pattern. All of the components drawing lines are offset inwards 1/2 that distance. In the case of thesse blanks the grid is 0.030" thick in the design so the pattern was offset inwards 0.015". These are the design parameters to get the actual cutting lines , laser kerf compensation must applied to the design drawing. All inlay cutouts are offset inwards by 1/2 a laser kerf (I've determined that a laser kerf for my laser is 0.007") so the cuts are offset inwards by 0.0035" All the cut line for the actual inlays are offset outwards by 1/2 a laser kerf or 0.0035" The end results of the offsetting gives you inlays that are a good friction fit and require no clamping or rubber bands to hold them in place during glue up. The blanks are glue up by flooding the outside of the blank with thin CA and allowing it to wick in the inlay seams. The brass tube is not in place during this procedure on this type of blank (puzzle blanks, and helicals are a different set of rules). After the glue is cured a chucking reamer of the same size as the drilled hole is run carefully through the hole to clean up any glue that may have puddled on the inside of the blank and distorted the hole's shape and size. After that it's pretty much business as usual. The brass tubes are glue in be careful to center them lengthwise in the blank. The blanks are ~ 1/10" longer than the brass so about 1/20" is sanded from each end. They are then turned to size and profile and hopefully don't fly apart.