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Creative Memories is a company whose name may be familiar to those who do or know people who do "scrapbooking". The company offers a Mat cutting system that uses plastic templates and "bugs" that ride on them to cut various shapes. For those wanting an easy way to mark out oval soundholes and rosettes they may be worth using.
The "bugs" have a small cutting blade that can be used to score a line on the soundboard. They come in various colors which have different offsets which allow you to scribe ovals of different dimension. By scribing around the edge of the plastic template and and then using the bugs a soundhole and a rosette around it can be quickly delineated. Deepening the track thus made (if necessary) and chiseling out the center can make short work of a process I used to struggle with.
The set of (4) oval templates and different colored bugs can be found reasonably priced on eBay from those who have moved on from the scrapbooking craze.
To stick down the template I used a piece of masking tape adhered to the template and a dot of superglue to hold the tape to the soundboard.

Neat!

I am cogitating on how to make a bug with a variable off set, possibly using a bowfrog. Bowfrogs have an affinity for bugs don't they?

I cobbled together a bug that allows changing the offset of the cutter using a bow frog and some wood and metal scraps. As a proof of concept I think it works well enough, but there is certainly room for some additional refinement.
Often you can find the templates sold without the cutters, so making one where the cutter off set can be varied not only makes the device more versatile, but might also save a few bucks.

I have some of those Clay from my wife's long abandoned scrapbooking days. I've made a few oval hole instruments but never had them in time to use them for anything. Someday!

Hi Darrel,
I saw some of your nice looking archtops on the zoom meetings Brad is doing. I am curious about whether it might be possible to soften the template and bend to follow the gentle curve of the arch of the top. Then again it might be possible to make a tape "hinge" that would allow you to hold it close to the treble side and score the soundhole and rosette outlines, and then hinge it over to score the bass side of the soundboard.
Creative Memories makes templates for cutting round mats, so if a person preferred a low tech (and quiet) way to score outlines for the typical round soundholes and rosettes this might be another way to do it.

I have one of I those sets (also thanks to a crafty wife) and I tried using it to do oval rosettes. It was on a flat top so I didn’t have the arch issue that Clay describes. I thought the track devices are very useful but the bugs have a blade that is too small and delicate to do the job that we are asking of it. It is designed to cut paper and card, not wood. I played around with replacing the blades but did not have much success. I kept thinking I was just on the verge of a breakthrough to a really good method, but I didn’t get there and eventually gave up. Now I am interested again and I like Clay’s idea of making a more robust cutter than can utilize the track system.

The bugs will cut a shallow line in the spruce that you can follow and deepen with a sharp knife blade as I mentioned. For pearl and thicker rosette materials this might be needed. For veneer type and some commercial rosettes the cutter may cut deep enough for the shallow channel required. The main limitation I see to using the bugs supplied is that they limit the locations and widths of the channels they will cut.
I agree with Mark - a more robust cutter would be an improvement and could avoid the need to deepen the channel the cutter makes, and making the cutter offset adjustable would allow for a wider range of rosette designs.
I am still working out how to build a better bug, and look forward to what others may come up with.

Is there a video of these tools being used?

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlcBfgwNNnE
This YouTube video gives good demonstration of how it works. I am sure you will immediately see the potential application to rosette cutting.

https://www.creativememories.com/shop-a ... ystem.html
Here is where you buy it. Not expensive.

Thanks Clay. That would probably work. For mine, I just used the oval function on "Paint" and printed the results once I got something pleasing to the eye. I then glued to poster paper and cut it out. Transfer to the top and then used a long body coping saw to cut the hole. If I were much more prolific, I'd likely make a router jig for the holes but I've never built the same thing twice since the first few Benedetto copies.