Oyster Veneering

[recipio]

Anyone got a good book or article on this subject. ?
I find that preparing the oysters is very difficult without them splitting or buckling . The real difficulty is fitting them into a precut background - like trying to fit a circle into a square.
Is it possible to get some kind of router template for this.?
It's an old technique and the late Andrew Varah achieved some stunning results with both furniture and boxes. Something to while away the winter nights ?!

 

[Hornbeam]

I tried doing some oyster veneering a while ago
The larger the oyster the more they tend to buckle and split. You can buy pre cut and dried oysters but they are not cheap
Best way to cut then is using a template. Squares are easiest but not the most pleasing. Hexagons look good but a lot more difficult

 

[sploo]

I had to look that up, as I was wondering why you wanted to cover molluscs in wood

 

[TRITON]

Cheers old wounds torn open.

We used to have a pretty old Laburnum tree in the family garden, diameter probably about 6"-7" which is pretty big for that tree, and I had it earmarked for oysters.
Laburnum oysters at 6"-7" is a rare and near impossible size to be lucky enough to get, most are 4 or 5 inches.

The tree seed pods are poisonous, and after my Sister had children, my Mother, in her infinite wisdom and completely unbeknown to me had the tree removed and taken away, lest the kids think there were pea pods and try to eat them

@£&%#"$& ^&@#£

Preparing them I've never had a chance to do(Thnks Mum ) but while at college the craft lecturer was into this kind of thing and took a section of trunk, and bandsawed square(ish) then sliced it up and stacked the oysters with a layer of paper in between each slice, put elastic bands around them in stacks of maybe 10 slices, and said they should be stored somewhere warm and dry till they dried out. If he said how long that would be, i cannot remember.
From memory I guess the slices were about 5 or so mm thick. He didnt attempt to plane or sand the bandsaw cut marks out of them. I expect once they were dry they'd be easier to sand flat. probably using something like a disc or belt sander.

I suppose if you dont have access to a bandsaw, you would clamp the trunk section and use something like a No5 or 6 plane to create the flat sides. Possibly a scrub blade first to remove the bulk quickly, then standard to flatten

 

[Blackswanwood]

This may be of interest @recipio

https://thewoodhaven2.co.uk/threads/prototype-box-dun.9942/#post-165861

 

[recipio]

Thanks all.
The ( very ) few You Tube clips show a router template being used which is the most logical. I'm a bit surprised that the end grain oysters allow clean routing but there's only one way to find out.
The French were masters of the technique and I'm sure there are old textbooks somewhere describing how it used to be done. More research needed.