Work on areas about 2" square at a time until the whole surface has been treated. Then wash off the surface using warm water and washing-up liquid to remove any residue. Dry the surface and examine. A really high gloss will require considerable elbow-grease. In general only a light dusting is required. Light scratches can be removed from matt surfaces by rubbing with wire wool and wax as above, but gloss surfaces will require complete re-polishing.
After 6 months or more the wood grain may show on the surface or cracking may be apparent. This tends to be more pronounced if the finish is a little thick. The only solution is to sand off the polish, back to the veneer, using fine garnet paper and repeat the finishing process.
There are a wide range of finishes available. Some of the more commonly used types are described here with a few of my thoughts on their suitability. Catalytic Lacquer - These finishes, such as Rustin's Plastic Coating, require the lacquer base to be mixed with a hardener before use. They are applied in much the same way as sanding sealer, though each coat must be applied before the previous coat has set hard.
They produce a very tough finish which will take a high gloss. The finishes are generally food safe and heat-resistant, making them ideal for "working" items such as cheese-boards.
Tung Oil - Also known as Chinese oil or Danish oil this oil is liberally swabbed onto the surface, allowed to soak in for a few minutes and then the surplus removed.
The process is repeated 5 or 6 times at intervals of a few hours. The oil sets by an oxidation reaction and forms a water-proof, matt finish of the type frequently seen on Scandinavian furniture. It does not fill the grain or bad joints so is not so suitable for complex marquetry. Acrylic Lacquers - These "varnishes" are water-based and therefore will cause problems if used directly on the veneer surface, especially if a water-based adhesive has been used!
The veneer surface must first be sealed with a coat or two of sanding sealer before the acrylic is applied. Once set hard the lacquer can be burnished to a reasonably high gloss.
Varnishes - In general these give a thick coating which will tend to go yellow with age. They are not generally recommended except for robust outdoor positions - such as house names and numbers. French Polish - A wonderful finish, but applying it is an art in itself. By all means have a go - if you find an easy way of doing it please let me know!
In general French Polished surfaces are not heat or water resistant. Assuming that your masterpiece has made it this far you will want to display it for all to see. Some marquetarians take little care over this aspect of their picture and there used to be a joke in the Marquetry Society suggesting the use of ring-pulls from cans as hangers - until someone actually did it!
There are several types of hangers available and in most cases any are suitable. A few of the commonly used types are described here. Eyelets and Cord - These are small brass or steel eyelets which are screwed into the back of the picture and which then have brass wire or cord attached to them. The exact positioning on the back of the picture is not critical as long as they are symmetrical.
Make sure the length of the screw is less than the thickness of the picture! Single Loop - This consists of a single brass ring attached by a small shackle which is screwed to the picture. If not positioned exactly centrally the picture will tend to hang unevenly. This type of fitting can be difficult to attach to some display fittings and for this reason is extremely unpopular with those trying to hang a large exhibition in a short time.
Picture Flanges - These consist of small flat brass plates which are attached to the back of the picture so that part of the flange sticks out. This flange is then used to screw the picture to the wall. These fittings are very good for permanently fixing pictures to walls, especially large ones, but are generally not suitable for pictures which are to be displayed in exhibitions. Hidden Cord - This is a very neat way of attaching cord which is described in detail in the book by Alan Townsend and David Middleton.
Basically two small holes are drilled part way though in the back of the picture take care! This produces a neat fixing which is almost flush. Take care to use strong cord as it cannot be easily replaced should it break. Should you intend to exhibit your work it will need protection. Small pictures can sometimes be packaged in padded posting bags, but these will not protect fully.
Far better is to make a simple, sturdy box. There are many possible designs, but two which have served the Marquetry Society well are as follows:. The box interior should be about 1" bigger all round than the picture and should be lined with foam or a soft material. The top is simply a sheet of hardboard which is located on a couple of dowels and held in place with large rubber bands, sticky tape or "Velcro" strips.
Box 2 - A box built up to approximately the same size as described above from sheets of corrugated cardboard stuck together with heavy-duty wallpaper paste. The internal opening for the picture can be rather smaller as only a layer of soft cloth, such as a duster, is required to protect the picture.
The top and bottom should be at least three layers thick and the sides should be at least 1" wide. The corners should be interlocked for strength. Details of the construction of the cardboard box are available from the Marquetry Society. Whilst making your pictures you are likely to find that simple pieces of veneer do not convey the subject to your satisfaction. Over the years marquetarians have developed various techniques for enhancing their pictures and in the following sections I have described a few that I have found useful.
Though the end results can look very complex, the techniques are not difficult and are well worth trying. Very few surfaces in real life are exactly one colour as seen. We know a newly painted wall is uniform in colour, but we SEE many shades due to shadows. Therefore a simple representation using one piece of veneer is unlikely to look right. Similarly if the shadows are cut in using a second veneer the joins between the light and dark will not merge as they do in nature. For centuries, marquetarians have addressed this problem by gently scorching light veneers to produce a gradual shading - good examples can be seen in scrollwork on furniture.
Traditionally the scorching medium used is hot sand, though molten lead is also used by some. A fine, "silver" sand is required and should be heated in a shallow pan on a stable hot-plate.
The veneer can be dipped into the sand using tweezers or the sand can be ladled onto a sheet of the veneer using a spoon. Nothing is too precise about this method - I have never seen the temperature of the sand mentioned in any text - so the desired effect must be achieved by trial and error.
Simple scorching can also be achieved using a large soldering iron - not a modern electronic type but one of the big brutish things that occasionally turn up in car boot sales. The veneer to be shaded is held just away from the surface of the iron and must be kept in place until the scorching appears on the side furthest from the iron.
For crisp dark lines the veneer edge can be touched against the iron. Shading with both sand or an iron tends to dry the veneer, which may cause cracking or warping. I usually place each shaded piece onto sheets of damp kitchen paper for a few seconds, then remove and dab off with dry paper. If the piece is not to be used straight away it should be placed under a weight to keep it flat. The damp paper restores some of the lost moisture and cools the veneer quickly ready for use.
Sailing ships make ideal subjects for marquetry pictures - lots of action with swirling seas and billowing sails. Unfortunately sailing ships without rigging look very strange, so some effort must be made to represent the web of lines and hawsers.
The technique for producing "fine lines" basically involves making a cut and inserting a sliver of veneer. If there are only a few lines to be inserted then a simple cut is all that is required. However if there are lots of lines then some veneer must be removed, otherwise the width of all the slivers will become significant and cause warping.
Generally the cut should be made free-hand, as very few lines are truly straight. Having made one cut a second is made just fractionally to one side, so that a sliver of the background veneer is removed.
This requires great care, especially if the cut crosses the grain obliquely as the knife will tend to wander. Remember that more can always be removed, but that what is removed cannot easily be replaced!
The sliver to be inserted is cut from a straight-grained piece of veneer. Colour is not greatly important as it is the effect of the line that will be seen, not the colour. Dyed black veneers are sometimes rather brittle and are best avoided for this work. The sliver is cut from the edge of a sheet using a straight-edge and should be considerably thinner than the thickness of the veneer.
Having cut a suitable sliver which usually takes a few attempts lay it sideways on the board and run the knife handle along it to squash it even thinner. Apply a tiny dab of PVA glue to one end of the sliver and push it into the end of the cut. Ease the sliver into the cut and nick it off carefully at the other end. It may be necessary to ease the cut open slightly to aid insertion of the sliver, but this should not be excessive - if it is then the cut is too narrow or the sliver is too wide!
Once inserted, the sliver should be fixed by rubbing in PVA glue as normal. If you think this technique is fiddly, spare a thought for the marquetarian who produced a beautiful picture of blackberries, each berry with highlights, shading on the leaves and individual thorns on the stalks, and then cut a cobweb over the whole thing.
The result was stunning - but what courage! Brick walls often appear in pictures and representing bricks in veneer is not particularly easy. If the wall is in the distance the best solution is to use a mottled veneer, such as Lacewood Platanus spp. However if the wall is in the foreground then more attention to detail is required.
The technique is to first cut in a mid-colour veneer to represent the mortar and then cut in individual bricks by the window method. Care is needed to keep the courses of bricks straight and the bricks the same size allowing for perspective if relevant. Bricks are not all identical, therefore a selection of similar veneers is required so that a random pattern is achieved. Care is also needed to take the effect of light into account. If there is a strong angled light across the wall then some shading is necessary to highlight the mortar.
This can be achieved fairly simply by touching the bottom and one edge be consistent of each brick against a hot iron to just darken them before insertion. These are seemingly rather different subjects, but one crafty technique can produce very effective marquetry representations of both roof tiles and reflections.
Select a piece of veneer to represent the tiles, for best effect it should have a straight, reasonably pronounced figure. Cut a piece at least 1" larger all round than the roof area to be "tiled", keeping the grain direction at same angle as the roof. Cut the veneer across in strips at a spacing appropriate to the tiles in the picture. If the roof is "old" then the spacing can be more irregular.
The veneer strips will be quite brittle and need to be handled carefully. The stagger should not be too even. When the whole piece has been cut and re-assembled, rub in a little PVA glue to hold it all together. Finally, cut in the roof as one piece, taking care to keep the lines of cuts and grain in the correct orientation. Reflections are produced using the same technique.
First, both the picture and its reflection must be cut as normal. Note that the colour of the reflection must compliment the scene, usually it will be a few tones darker, and not every detail is needed. Then the reflection area is cut into strips parallel with the horizon and staggered as before. The strips should be quite narrow and the stagger must not be too regular. The end result can be very effective. In general, marquetarians try to make their pictures using the natural colour, figure and grain of the veneers available to them.
However, there are ways of altering veneers and a few are described here. Some purists may consider some of these methods as "cheating", but really there are no hard and fast rules.
One thing I would recommend though, is that all veneers, natural or artificially coloured, be used sympathetically with the subject. Harewood - In the days when logs were transported by floating down rivers and sawn on water driven saw-mills the sawyers noticed that if the logs were left in the water for a long period the resulting timber was often more grey in colour.
The effect was particularly pronounced when the water was rich in iron. The colour change is produced by iron salts in the water reacting with tannins which occur naturally in some wood to produce dark coloured compounds similar to old fashioned ink. The process is now controlled and a range of harewoods in various shades of grey are available commercially. They are very attractive and blend well with natural veneers. As the process mimics a "natural" reaction most marquetarians are happy using harewoods.
It is possible to produce your own harewood by immersing strips of veneer in solutions of ferrous sulphate. Some veneers react much better than others, so trial and error is the order of the day. Some marquetarians have had some success from soaking rusty nails in vinegar and then using a dilution of the resulting "goo" to treat the veneer.
Dyed Veneers - These are available in a range of colours which tend to be rather gaudy. Their use in "normal" marquetry is rather limited, but they can look very effective in cartoon subjects for children's pictures.
The dyed blue veneers can be useful for kingfishers - a favourite marquetry subject - but should be avoided for sky or water as they rarely look right. At least one marquetarian has produced his own dyed veneers using colour-fast fabric dyes.
Again some experimentation was needed, but a range of colours more subtle than usual was achieved. Bleaching - There are some commercial wood bleaches available, which will take out much of the colour from a veneer. In general the marquetarian should have a veneer close to the desired colour already available, so the use of bleaches would only be indicated if a particular figure of veneer was required.
Domestic bleach will lighten some veneers, but tends to weaken the internal structure of the wood and must be rinsed out thoroughly before the veneer is allowed to dry.
Colourwood - This is produced by injecting dye into living trees, which are subsequently felled and cut into veneers. The effect is much more "natural" than dying as the colour is more randomly spread. Colourwood is expensive to produce and not always easily available, so always have a look at any you find for sale. Parquetry is the use of geometric designs in marquetry. It is particularly applicable to game boards, but can equally be applied to a large table or a pair of earrings.
There are numerous techniques for producing parquetry designs and there is not space to cover them all here. Therefore a few examples, not necessarily the simplest, are described to whet your appetite.
Accuracy is vital to successful parquetry, therefore a cutting template is essential. All that is required a guide fence as shown which can be moved to give the required angles.
Care must be taken that the whole assembly is rigid and accurate. The guide fence is set at the required angle and the strips butted up to it. The diamonds are then cut using the same spacers. Care is required when cutting thin strips that they do not flex away from the guide fence under the pressure from the knife, a waste strip on the outer edge of the pack of strips will help, and a sharp knife is essential.
A chess board would seem to be the simplest item of parquetry possible. In some ways this is true, but if you attempt to make one by cutting and assembling the 64 squares, even using a jig, you are likely to be disappointed. The trick is to work in strips, which avoids the cumulative errors arising from cutting individual squares. Take 5 strips of the light veneer and 4 of the dark, each cut accurately to the required width of the squares usually 1.
Each strip must be at least 9 "squares" long. Assemble the strips alternately and trim one end exactly square. Using the same spacers cut across the strips to produce alternate light and dark squares, then stagger every alternate strip to produce the checker-board effect. Trim off the surplus light squares and add borders and stringers as required.
Basket weave patterns are ideal for decorating small items of applied marquetry such as coasters and jewellery boxes. There are basically two ways of producing weave patterns, cutting in individual pieces or unit assembly along similar lines to the technique used for reflections. This method is used to produce an "open" weave design through which a background veneer can be seen. A strip of cross-grain veneer is cut such that the width of the strip equals the length of the pieces required.
If desired and it does make a big difference the long edges are gently sand-shaded and then the strip is cut into pieces of the correct width. These are cut into the background veneer using the piece itself as a template. Care is required to keep the pieces strictly in line, otherwise the pleasing regularity of the pattern is easily lost.
This pattern works well if cut in sycamore over a dark, highly figured veneer such as vavona Sequoia spp. This method produces a range of "closed" weave designs.
Strips are prepared and shaded as above, then assembled alternately with thin strips of veneer. The assembly is then cut at right-angles and the strips staggered to produce the weave effect. Again, care is needed to keep the thin strips in line.
Different patterns can be achieved by aligning every other, every third or even every fourth strip. Of course there are more complicated patterns which can be assembled by one or a combination of these techniques. The Louis cube is a fascinating design as it gives a strongly three-dimensional appearance to a flat surface. Three colours of diamond are arranged together to give the impression of a pile of small cubes.
It is an ideal pattern for small boxes. Selection of the veneers is a matter of choice, but for a first attempt sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus , pear Pirus communis and walnut Juglans regia give a pleasing effect. On the cutting board, cut strips of veneer using a spacer equal to the required width of the diamond.
Tape the strips together side by side and lightly mark the face side with a pencil. Take care to keep all the diamonds the right way up. Cut a window slightly larger than the required final size and shape of the pattern in a piece of card. Make sure the left edge of the window is cut exactly straight. Stick masking tape or clear library film on the underside of the card, so that the sticky surface is upwards.
Starting from the left edge, place one dark and one mid-tone diamond, points together, against the straight side of the window. Place a light diamond between them. The diamonds are best handled by lightly "stabbing" with the point of a sharp knife - very light pressure is all that is used, if the diamond is not picked up then the knife needs sharpening! Cut a light diamond in half, keeping both pieces the same way up and place them against the side, ensuring that the grain runs in the same direction as the full light diamond already placed.
The assembly should now look like the second diagram. Continue to add diamonds, always keeping the grain in the correct direction until the required area is covered. Traditionally the three grain directions should all be different, as shown by the arrows in the diagram. To achieve this, one colour diamonds will need to be inverted before placing. The choice of reference books is a very personal matter. The comments below indicate my opinions, but you are recommended to view library copies before committing to purchase.
We highlight a range of options for each of the core tools a well-equipped shop must have, plus the new tools you're going to want. Craftsman's Mach Series wrench is forged from a block of steel for the ultimate in strength and durability. To adjust its jaws, just slide the thumb button.
We've seen the future of handheld cordless tools, and it's brushless. Its spring-loaded joints are tough and fold with a precise snap. Nice ruler. It combines a deep bin, a small-parts bin with removable dividers, and a toolbox with lift-out tray in a clever hand-truck design, which makes it easy to take home the twelve-pack he owes you. For power it's got a 6. Rubbing stick. A smooth "Gothic Arch" shaped hardwood block used to press the inserted veneers in to the picture and rub the glue into the joint.
Tracing paper. A piece of good quality tracing paper larger than the picture. Should be 4H or above as tracing paper takes the point off very quickly. Carbon paper. Black NOT blue as the latter tends to stain the wood. Carbon paper is fast disappearing with the advent of word processing. Hang on to any supplies that come your way. White paper veneer tape. Paper tape to prevent veneers splitting while cutting etc.
Masking tape. For holding the tracing in position and keeping your veneers in registration during marking out. Sharpening stone.
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