| Blog series by Chris Davis | updated 746 days ago | 4 parts | 9443 reads | 8 comments total |
Part 1: The Plan
I’m starting a very exciting project. Anything new that I try is exciting for me. I love new things and new techniques. I build a lot of murphy beds, as you can see from my post, but when I got customer wanting to add a whale design to one, I was all in. I don’t consider myself an artist or my work art, so this would be my first attempt at something like that. I’ve heard and read a little on marquetry and decided this would be the direction I’d take the customer....
Part 2: The Layout
Okay, I got approval form the customer and time to get started on the project. To pattern it I enlisted the services from a local sign company. They printed it up with the colors separated life size (life size to the bed not life size in the wild). They made me some mask to use as the pattern. Here is also the wood I choose to use. They are Quarter Sawn Walnut (dark color) and Lacewood (reddish color): These were masks so I was able to stick them to the veneer pieces. I cut them out...
Part 3: Cutting the Substrate
I have the design, cut the veneer pieces and now it is time to put it on the face. I tossed around ideas on how I’d put it on the face. My first idea was to order a large sheet of maple veneer (background wood). Cut the whale into the it like I did the rest and then glue it all onto a substrate panel. What I ended up doing was using 3/4” maple plywood as the substrate and cut in the design. First I outlined the whale. I then went around the border with a chisel. This allo...
Part 4: Gluing it down.
Again I had different routes that I could have taken on the glue to use. I decided to go with regular yellow glue. It is more forgiving. If I would have laid the face down in one piece instead of an inlay, I may have used contact cement. Since the whales were fairly small I felt the yellow glue would work fine. I needed even and constent pressure on the entire piece. What I did was laid it down in this order. 2×4’s, substrate, glue, whale, wax paper, foam pad, plywood, 2...
