It has been quite a few years but I have done a little fret work and a fair amount of intarsia. Be patient and don't horse the saw and you'll be fine. The shaping and sanding on the intarsia pieces can be tedious but it is all worth it in the end. When I cut my intarsia pieces if I was working with 3 or 4 kinds of wood I would laminate all the layers of 1/4"-3/8" thick stock together with carpet tape and cut the whole pattern at once. By doing that you can make multiples of the same pattern with different color schemes.