Some Marquetry

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Villa Park, CA
I'm doing a project right now which will require a number of marquetry panels. Here's one that I thought came out nicely. The field is figured white oak in a half radial pattern (I discovered that oak veneer can be quite difficult to work with). The marquetry woods are holly, cherry, mahogany, bloodwood and dyed woods. The banding is dyed (adobe) veneer and holly and the border is figured white oak. I want to do each panel in a different primary wood and in a different design - which is challenging me. I'll just have to see what I can come up with.

I chose the project to give me some additional experience in doing marquetry. It'll be a while before the whole project is completed.

Mike

Marquetry-panel-01.jpg
 
Wow yeah those flowers are fantastic. Did you sand shade them or???

I like the base as well, although having the quarter sawn figure more prominent only in the lower piece of the frame is perhaps a smidge distracting, the top and side pieces really "flow" together very nicely on the grain, the bottom one somewhat less so.
 
Wow yeah those flowers are fantastic. Did you sand shade them or???

I like the base as well, although having the quarter sawn figure more prominent only in the lower piece of the frame is perhaps a smidge distracting, the top and side pieces really "flow" together very nicely on the grain, the bottom one somewhat less so.
The flowers are sand shaded. Yeah, to get everything to flow together on the border, I would have had to take a piece of long veneer and cut it to flow around the corners - and even then, one corner would not match. But I didn't have a piece of veneer that long after doing the rest of the piece - the back is also done in a radial match which used some of the veneer.

Plus, if I used one piece of veneer to run the border, I'd lose the ability to do another radial match because I wouldn't have enough pieces.

So I chose to do the best with what I had.

Mike
 
Well, with all that encouragement, I'll post a picture of one of the other panels. This one is a water lily and is similar to a panel I did earlier. I tried to get more depth in the image with this panel. I also used a darker green which I don't like - the lighter green I used before looks better.

Anyway... the flower is holly, dyed yellow veneer, and dyed gray veneer for the reflection. The flower, its reflection and some of the lily pads are sand shaded. The lily pads are dyed green and the water is dyed black veneer. The border is figured maple.

While I liked this image when I first did it, I'm now concerned that it's like "Elvis on black velvet" - just a high contrast image without any real artistic value.

The picture is not the best - it was taken under less than ideal conditions. I'll try to take a better picture tomorrow.

Mike

Marquetry-panel-02.jpg
 
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I also used a darker green which I don't like - the lighter green I used before looks better.
View attachment 66793

I dunno Mike I like this green pretty well in this context, agree the lighter green looks better on the leaves of the other piece but for the lily leaves the darker color looks pretty good to me and goes well with the darker background.

Personally I also prefer the first piece you showed, the use of natural wood colors appeals to my aesthetics but I think you're perhaps being a bit harsh on yourself with the "Elvis on black velvet" comparison :D This piece has a lot of great depth and texture that put it well into artistic territory in my book.
 
While I liked this image when I first did it, I'm now concerned that it's like "Elvis on black velvet" - just a high contrast image without any real artistic value.



View attachment 66793

You made a picture that most people couldn't draw out of wood...and you're worried about artistic value. Sheeze. Maybe if it were dogs playing poker or something it might be good. :rofl: It's awesome man, I've done enough veneering to know what kinda work and skill you put into that. I'm not easily impressed but you've done it.
 
i like both mike but the holly one does stand out on top,, i havnt done any marquetry so am only gonna voice a opinion on my color background and the outdoors experiences i have acquired.. the lily pads on my monitor look fine, they range from your color to brighter green so you fine with yours. as for the lilly blossom i think you may have gotten to much shading. they tend to be brighter than what this one appears on my monitor .. once again i am just voicing opinions from my previous reasing... the skill and craftsman ship is top notch.. and i want to do some of that one day like you have shown us,i have the picture in my head of a trilum panel that i want to make so in the future i may ask for some help if your available..
 
I think you're right, Larry. The flower is a problem because you have to shade the edges of the petals or they just all blend together into a lump of white. But I think I did a bit too much shading on them this time. I'll be more careful next time. And if you decide to get into marquetry, I'll be honored to provide you any help I can.

Here's another picture of the water lilies taken outdoors so the picture quality is a bit better. In person, the flower stands out pretty well.

Marquetry-panel-03.jpg

No one asked me what these panels will be used for but I'll go ahead and describe what I'm trying to make. The panels are the tops of tray tables, a prototype of which is seen here.

Tray-stand-01.jpg
The stand will fold up so that it's flat.

Tray-stand-02.jpg Tray-stand-03.jpg
After I make the tray stands - probably five - I'll make a case that the tray stands will slide into. The case will serve as an end table on the side of a sofa or chair. When you have a party, you'll pull the tray stands out and people can use them to sit their food or drinks on. I'll do some marquetry on the case, also.

This project is just an excuse to do some marquetry. It allows me to do different themes, one design for each tray top, and one for the case.

Mike
 
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I am speechless Mike. I cannot imagine allowing someone to put something down on this "tray". I am in total awe as to this element of woodworking.

Mike I have way too many questions your work brings up. Thickness of wood? How do you cut it? How much true "artistry" ability is involved. Can a right brainer do this or do you need to be a creative type. What i cannot get my mind around is not having the wood split with the grain line while cutting sanding and the likes or are you using a knife and thin veneer ??? Yeah this is one that could do with one of your excellent tutorials. BTW Mike son is doing very well in Calculus. ;):thumb: actually extremely well something must have rung a bell.
 
Beautiful stuff as always Mike. I have had the pleasure of seeing some of Mike's work first hand and it is quite inspiring. He is far too humble and I applaud him for how he shares his skills with others as an instructor. Kudos Mike!
 
Let me see if I can address your questions within your posting, below:

I am speechless Mike. I cannot imagine allowing someone to put something down on this "tray". I am in total awe as to this element of woodworking.

Mike I have way too many questions your work brings up.

Thickness of wood? The veneer is 1/42" thick. For these panels, I glued them to 1/2" Baltic birch. There's a fancy face veneer on the bottom, but not marquetry. I'll post a picture of the bottom veneer of the first panel later.

How do you cut it? Veneer is cut a number of ways. When preparing the veneer, I'll usually cut it with a veneer saw, but if I need a delicate cut, I'll use a knife. I use a Japanese laminated knife (actually, two, a left bevel and a right bevel). For marquetry, there's several ways to cut the pattern. I use a scroll saw (Hawk RBI, 26"). I make up a packet which consists of layers of veneer of the different colors that I want to use in the design. I use cardboard on top and bottom to minimize splitting when cutting. The pattern (called a "cartoon") is glued to the top layer of cardboard. The scroll saw blade is a 2/0 blade. I cut vertically but some people tilt the table so that they can get a better fit of the pieces into the holes - since the blade has width and leaves a kerf. The advantage of cutting vertically is that you can make multiple copies at the same time. For example, when I did the first panel shown above, I made two more copies of the design and put in two halves of a radial pattern of walnut burl - I'll post a picture of that also, later. Two things mitigate the kerf width - (1) when you glue with water based glue, the veneer expands and fills some of the kerf, and (2) I use urea formaldehyde glue and put enough so that it comes up in the kerfs, filling them. If you look closely (probably need to see it in person), you'll see a glue line along the pattern. If the color of the glue is right, it'll match the veneer well enough so you won't notice it.

How much true "artistry" ability is involved. I have zero artistic talent. What I do is search the web for pictures of flowers that I like. Then I print them out and trace the flower using tracing paper. Then assemble the flowers into a design I like. I may draw one or two flowers, especially buds, myself to fill out a design. Drawing the design takes a lot of time, maybe half the total project time.

Can a right brainer do this or do you need to be a creative type. A right brainer can definitely do this. But let me warn you, marquetry is a build up skill. You need to know the basics before you tackle it. You need to know how to build furniture because marquetry is applied to furniture. Then you need to know how to work with veneer because you have to do a lot of regular veneer work to build a marquetry design. And finally, doing marquetry is tedious in the extreme. There's a lot of very small pieces and they have to be accurately cut out (so you need good scroll saw skills), they need to be kept track of (so you need a good system to lay the parts down so you can find them later), they then need to be sand shaded, then put into the field, and any pieces which were damaged have to be remade. Then the finished panel of veneer is glued to the substrate. It's a slow process. One of these panels takes many days.

What i cannot get my mind around is not having the wood split with the grain line while cutting sanding and the likes or are you using a knife and thin veneer ??? Yeah this is one that could do with one of your excellent tutorials. I described cutting the veneer, above. Sanding is not done until you glue the veneer down on the substrate. There are issues in the gluing process but that's part of learning to work with regular veneer (non-marquetry). Once the veneer is glued down, the rest is standard finishing, except you need to make sure you don't sand through the veneer.

BTW Mike son is doing very well in Calculus. ;):thumb: actually extremely well something must have rung a bell. Glad to hear it. Give him my best and all the encouragement you can.
 
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Here's a couple of pictures I referred to in my earlier posting. The first shows the back of the panel with the half radial and the flowers (the first panel I posted).

Marquetry-panel-04.jpg

Before you attempt marquetry, you should be able to lay regular veneer into patterns such as this. This pattern is in figured white oak, 8 pieces. I chose the cut so that I'd get the "star" effect in the center. Working with this oak veneer was challenging - it's not a veneer for beginners but there are easier veneers that you can do the same effect with - example, quarter sawn cherry which usually has sapwood in it.

The second picture shows a panel that I'm working on now. I cut it out at the same time as I cut the design for the first panel posted. The field is a radial match of walnut burl. I cut that in half and aligned it with the other half, then put those pieces into the packet with enough colored veneer to make three designs. I sand shaded all the pieces at the same time, then assembled them into the field pieces. Finally, I took the two half radials of walnut burl and put them back together into a single full radial.

Marquetry-panel-05.jpg

Skipper, my shop dog, likes to lick the veneer tape because it uses an animal glue. If I'm not careful, he'll destroy my work to get to the glue:(

Mike
 
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