Andrew's View of the Week

A week ago my wife and I went to the  Pacific International Quilt Show.  It is just amazing how those artists take fabric and thread and create landscapes, portraits, abstracts and other amazing pictures.  These aren’t your grandma’s keep you warm scrap quilts.  These are fine works of art.

As I left the show all I could think about was how much I’d love to create work that would move someone else as much as these quilts moved me.

Now I am not a quilter or fabric artist.  I work in wood where the colors are variations on brown and texture is in the grain patterns.  In wood you don’t get the same vibrant colors as there are in fabric but still there is line, shading, light values, composition and perspective.  I have often thought that many of the same design considerations that exist in a fabric picture must exist in a wood picture.  In fact I’ve seen some marquetry work that was every bit as moving as these quilts were.

I did have an interesting experience in the vendor’s area of the show – I found a marquetry tool that I have been looking for.  Wood veneers can be cut with either a scroll saw or a knife.  I’ve been wanting to learn how to cut a picture with a knife.  As I was wandering around the vendor’s booths there was a scissor vendor with the #3 scalpel handle I needed.  Yup, one of the knives used to cut veneer is a scalpel with a #11 blade (same shape as a Xacto but thinner).  So I bought it and then found the cutting mat I needed to go along with it.

Lately I’ve been feeling the push to just do some stuff.  I tend to mostly just sit around and think about things – I am really good at “big picture” thinking.  Not so good at getting of my rear and doing things.  Like my shop – it’s a disaster and there are a ton of things it needs to be the perfect marquetry workshop.  Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what I need to do to “redo” or “fix up” my shop.  I need a new work bench, an air compressor, a lathe, a tape dispenser, a veneer storage and …

But after the show I decided enough of thinking and time to start doing – with whatever tools and fixtures I’ve got on hand.  Turns out I’ve got a bunch of tools and supplies.

In the last week I’ve started on three marquetry projects: Knife cut tulips, a tissue box and a chess board.  These are cut and glued down but still need to be sanded and have finish applied.  Here is a picture of the tulips:

Knife cut Tulip Marquetry

I did two of these tulips.  This was an exercise in technique and learning to cut veneer with a knife – plus a good excuse to use my new scalpels.  I won’t list the flaws I see in the work but I did learn a lot about knife cutting and I really like the results.  I did take pictures of the cutting process and plan to write a post on how I did this.

I went to the marquetry workshop this last weekend and showed them my tulips and got a lot of great suggestions on how to improve my technique.

They were doing two projects at the workshop – a marquetry tissue box holder and a chess board.  Two of the members gave instructions and demos on how to do each project.  Yesterday I made my version of the tissue box.

The turtle is a Hawaiian petroglyph and the box is destined for our Hawaiian themed guest bathroom.

Turtle Tissue Box

I made a start on the chess board.  The chess board is destined to be a gift so you won’t get to see it until after Christmas.

Chessboard in progress

There you have it – I did stuff.  Might not be fine art but it is mine and with that comes a sense of pride in having actually done something.  Maybe the next piece will be a moving artistic statement.

Here are some more details and a few photos on the recent class I took on marquetry on wood turnings.  Putting veneer on a flat surface has certain challenges but a curved surface has a few more.  For me the class was even more of a challenge because I’ve never turned wood on a lathe before and as I posted previously I had a few reservations about that.

The first thing we did in class was to learn how to use the lathe.  First thing to learn is to round a square block and then cut some beads into it.  The stick in the photo is just a practice piece.  It wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be and I never felt unsafe.

Practice Pieces

Next thing to make was a bowl.  The procedure is simple once it’s explained to you.  First you round a block of wood.  Then cut a tenon that will fit into the chuck, turn the piece over and shape the whole thing.  Well, that is the over simplified version but it is easy and with a little coaching I got it done.  The only thing I didn’t do was sharpen the tools – that is a whole skill set of it’s own and the class was primarily about marquetry and not wood turning.

Marquetry for the Tree

The first marquetry piece was an inlay in a plate.  A plate is really just a very shallow bowl.  The marquetry is done first and then cut to a rough circle and glued to a thin piece of wood.  The plate is then turned.  Then through some lathe magic a shallow depression is cut into the bottom of the plate just deep enough for the marquetry sandwich to fit into.  The circle for the marquetry is refined on the lathe and then the depression circle in the plate is slowly expanded until the marquetry just fits in.  Then it is glue and clamps.

Finished Plate

My plate still needs some final sanding and a bit of finish.

The next piece is a goblet to show how to apply marquetry to a curved surface.  It turns out that veneer is more flexible that you’d think and if you choose the radius of the curve carefully you can get a piece to bend all the way around without breaking.

I don’t have too many pictures of this process.  I tend to get so focused on my work that I forget to take pictures of the process.

The process is simple – start making a goblet by rounding a piece of wood, cut a tenon on one end and hollow out the bowl of the goblet.  To save us some time in the class our instructor had done all these steps ahead of time so the first thing I did was to cut the marquetry into a long strip that was longer than the circumference of the goblet.  Then the goblet went on the lathe and a inset was cut the same depth and width as the thickness and width of the marquetry.  This was very fiddly work and I had to learn a light and steady touch on the tools.

Once the inset and marquetry strip were ready it was time for the glue up.  Normally with marquetry the glue up is simple – spread glue, slap the veneer down and shove in the vacuum press.  That works great if it’s a flat surface but won’t work as well around the outside of a curved surface.  The solution is in this picture.

Glue up for the goblet marquetry

That green thing is a ‘theraband.’  The kind of thing you’d get from your physical therapist (like I got to do exercises for my frozen shoulder).  Basically it is just a large wide rubber band.  The procedure is to put glue on about 80% of the curve, place the marquetry, and wrap it up with the band.  The band provides enough pressure to hold the glue and after about 30 minutes the band can be removed.  Then it is time to carefully trim the ends so they fit and glue those down so they are flat and the seam doesn’t show.

My goblet isn’t complete because I ran out of time to cut the stem.  I don’t own a lathe but a friend has said he’d let me use his lathe and help me do the final turning.

I’ll post a picture of the completed piece when that is done.