Looking for some marquetry advice.

[Dug]

I'm new to marquetry and am looking for some advice on a project i'm planning, and hoping people here might be able to help.

I am planning to recreate a board game in marquetry. The board is 600mm x 600mm (24" x 24" in old money), and comes in 4 parts. The cardboard board folds-up like many board games but recreating it in wood will make this difficult.

I was planning on using four 300mm x 300mm (12" x 12") pieces of 24mm (1") plywood as the main substrate of the board and joining them together using bullet-shaped, 8mm brass alignment dowels.

This just leaves me with how to apply the finished marquetry to the surface of the board. I can think of several ways of doing it but they all have drawbacks...

1) Apply the finished marquetry to a 600mm x 600mm piece of plywood and saw it into quarters. The drawback being the lost material in the kerf of the saw cut and that, in veneering the cut sides, you can't have the picture overlap the side-veneer.

2) Create 4 separate marquetry segments and glue them to the 4 pieces of plywood. The drawback here being that the pieces might not align well.

3) Create one large marquetry piece and cut the finished work into 4 quarters before gluing it to the 4 separate base boards. The risk here is in misaligning the separate pieces slightly.

4) Create one large marquetry piece and glue it to the 4 separate base boards (taped together for a solid join), then cut (with a knife or very fine saw) the veneer along the base board seams. This seems like the best aproach as it avoids misalignment of the finished piece, a solid underpinning for cutting and (if a knife is used) no loss from the kerf of a saw blade), and allows me to apply the veneer to the sides of the base board and have the main picture face overlap it (or, the sides but up against the underside of the top veneer). The risk I see is that if the knife doesn't exactly follow the seam, then all is ruined.

How would you tackle this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[mrpercysnodgrass]

No 2, would be my preferred method. If you cut four boards and add a 20mm piece of solid timber around the edges, then make sure they are all perfectly square and to size this will give you two advantages, one, you will have some solid timber to sink your hinges into which will be better than ply, two, you will not have to veneer the sides once your marquetry sections are in place. You can hold your pieces in place with very fine pins tapped in and cut 2mm above the surface and removed when the glue has cured.

 

[Droogs]

With regard to making the boards first, I would suggest making them undersize and to then edge them all the way around with a solid wood edge, which will bring them to the size you want. This will give you a more robust set of board pieces and allow for much better fixing of the hingine/joining furniture you plan to use.

Before glueing on the solid edging, apply a slightly oversized MRMDF substrate to the undersize ply and trim to size. Then attach the edging and plane down to give you a smooth top surface.

Once you have your 4 pieces, what you do next is dictated by the marquetry pattern you are about to use.
If you are applying a chequered type pattern, I would suggest that you place the 4 boards together and having cut your veener squares start at the very centre and lay your pattern working outward using invidual squares etc until you have all pieces laid. I would also suggest that you leave the outer pieces longer on the outside border edge. Which you can then trim using a sharp knife and a straight edge to size once the main part is complete. And then glue on your border edge which will be wider than the remaining board and overhang the attached edging. You then trim to size.

If you are using a solid field of either the same or different veneers for each of the 4 pieces then, apply the venner with the appropriate grain direction and then trim off and apply a border.

If you are applying a picture or somthing more complicated, I would suggest making it up as one piece and allow for the kerf that will be lost when cutting it into 1/4s. IE take your pattern and cut into quarters, and tack onto the veneer packet with a space between each that is the equivalent of the kerf you will use

I would also suggest using hide glue for this as it will allow you to be a lot more off and onable with the veneers. you just need a glue pot/bain marie to keep the glue ready and a domestic iron set hight and a veneering hammer of some sort. The beauty of using the hide glue is that if you have placed a piece out of alignment, just heat up the piece and lift it off to re-apply

hope that makes sense and helps

 

[custard]

Dug, instead of launching yourself with a tricky project why not do some simpler stuff first to learn your craft at a more measured pace?

 

[Dug]

Custard: I've taken a stab at a little introductory project (actually a small section of the game board in question) and have a few boxes lined-up as warm-up projects. I'm just planning the big one in advance.

Droogs: The board is a complex picture (see attached) so I guess your suggestion of cutting into quarters and leaving space for the kerf is the applicable one. I don't have a bandsaw with a 300mm throat, nor a table saw (unless I build a table to mount my circular saw into). There's a big leap of faith in getting the kerf-gap and cut exactly right. This idea makes me properly nervous given that the marquetry alone is probably the spare time of several months. I will give it some thought.

With respect to the glue, to date I've used PVA as an iron-on contact adhesive (apply on both veneer and substrate, leave to dry, iron on) which has worked surprisingly well (I was very skeptical to start with). What advantages does hide glue have over this? I went with PVA to keep costs down initially, as I had it lying around.

Droogs & mrpercysnodgrass: I hear what you're saying about solid edging. That resolves one of the worries I had about the corners and strengthens something that will likely see some man-handling.

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[Droogs]

The main advantage is that even once set, with hide glue, you can heat it up by passing a normal iron over it and soften the glue to re-position your veneer pieces.
The thing to remember is that unless you use some pretty tight clamping sytem for connecting the boards together so that they are able to hide the joint gaps you will have some issue with the pieces mating perfectly. Why not take advantage of that to cover any slight discrepencies. for a picture like this I would suggest making it on a single piece of 2 or 3mm MRMDF substrate and then once completed use a a couple of pieces of 19mm MDF to make a base (slightly larger than the picture) and top platten slightly longer than the width of the picture and about half as deep. Place the finished picture on the base and secure the top platten with its known straight edge just to the edge of your marked cut line and to then use a hand veneer saw (the type made by crown: see link) to saw through. The saw blade is about 1mm thick, so not really noticable. and then apply the quarters to the relevant base pieces

http://www.flinn-garlick-saws.co.uk/aca ... r_Saw.html

Will do a sketchup of the patttens etc if you need me to later

 

[Droogs]

That's a lot of work in that there picture especially if you are going to use the window method. Also has a carp load of sand shading in it on some really small pieces to make it stand out. My admiration and best wishes, as a first major project it'll take some beating.

You have to do a WIP for this, warts and all sorta thing as it will definately be worth it

Edit
OOH OOH Can I ask what the game is?

 

[Dug]

With regard to sawing, there are some saws out there with tiny kerfs (although it seems I can't post links) between 0.2mm and 0.3mm) so this is beginning to sound like a reasonable plan. With 0.2mm removal of material, this would minimise the impact of the kerf.

I am planning on simplifying the design somewhat and using grain and figure to fill in some detail (like the feathers). I should be able to keep the sand darkening to a minimum with clever use of wood.

The game is Tsuro. It's very simple and a game only lasts 5 to 10 mins. In many ways the effort of this project will far outweigh the longevity of the game, but I will end up with something beautiful and stunning (assuming I don't make a pig's ear of it). I saw the board and immediately thought of recreating it in wood.

A WIP thread might be on the cards, although it will be slow going due to a derth of free time.

 

[Droogs]

It's best to use a veneer saw as the teeth are specifically ground and have set only on one side in order to get the correct cut and edge properties needed to but the veneers together

 

[Dug]

Would an inlay saw do the job? They seem to be thinner than standard veneer saws and have a smaller pitch (greater tpi). The teeth have no offset which should give a good clean cut. Pax and Hishika both make them with a 0.3mm and 0.2mm blade thickness (and kerf) respectively.

Edit: It seems that Pax is the name of the line; they're made by Thomas Flinn & Co.