Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #14: Inside of the box "Fisage" (parquetry)

After almost a month away in Europe, London and France, I am back and working on the boxes again. It was really nice to go back home as I haven’t been able to do so for 4 years. It was also nice to be back, through away the jacket and sweater, an put on the flip flops.

Well, regarding the boxes.

When I came back I put the already cut bone leaves in green dye

and while waiting to feel up the holes in the marquetry,

I started working on the inside of the boxes. The marquetry were already cut for a while now

Veneered, and the boxes framed with full blind dovetails and veneered on the inside with Old Brown Glue.

I build the partitions out of solid bloodwood

Mortise and dado on the inside of the boxes and cut the inside panel to size.

We were going to do the inside all bloodwood, but while fooling around in the veneer room, I found a really nice flitch of tulip cut in the late 19th century and we decided to use it. Again I used Old Brown glue to glue the frisage (parquetry)

I also started to build the lid frisage (parquetry) without the bloodwood framing that I reserve for last to hit the corner at the right spot.

Here is the glue side so we can see the effect better

I can tell you, when you work on something interesting like that, it is nice to be back from vacation.

Next, green bone incrustation and veneering of the boxes sides.

-- Patrice lejeune

Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #13: Top incrustation

As promised some news on the marquetry top for the treasure box series #2

The challenge here is to insert the oval white bone inlay first then cut the rest of the background repositioning the pack perfectly as some of the marquetry looks like it moves in front and in the back of those bones.

I first build the pack with 4 layers of paperbacked ebony sawn veneer

I used a idea of mine and an idea from Patrick to locate perfectly the veneer with the 2 drawings that had to be used to cut this background twice.

I used lines and a v cut to clamp the pack with the first drawing and he second drawing

and drill 4 holes with a bit the right size to use veneer nails to rebuild the back after cutting the oval.

The drawing for the oval has bridges to keep everything at the right spot

Cutting the cavities on the marquetry chevalet

I prepared a light paper assembly board as I had to glue it twice on an assembly board and did not want to add to much paper and glue to the front.

I had to cut some ebony string inlays to go in sandwich between 2 bones purflings.

And soaked the bone to make them more bendable.

Here is the background with the oval cut done, the ebony string inlay and the bone. The assembly board is ready, the glue is hot and I have podcast on my Ipad, ready to go.

The background is slapped down on the assembly board with hot hide glue

I cut the middle bridges as I go and insert the 3 string inlays in the cavity, here is a particularly horrible picture to illustrate this step

You can see now the locator hole Patrick thought about to rebuild the pack precisely

and the rebuilding in action

Ready to cut some more.

The pack was fairly heavy (3 Lb) and the ebony is really hard to cut. 

It took me roughly 5 days with 5 hours of cutting a day to finish it. This is after 3 days.

But the locators did work great. As you can see the pieces I had to keep as they were to small for bridges are exactly the same, better than expected.

When I open a pack I always keep all my trash you never know what you are going to miss

Like this broken bridge

I got myself ready for incrustation

A series of picture to illustrate the incrustation session, almost 2 weeks for 4 panels

And as usual I love details shot. Please pardon this excess of pictures, but this has been my biggest marquetry challenge so far and I did sweat a lot on that part, and not only because I was working at 85-92 degrees because of successive heat waves…

Thank you for following !

-- Patrice lejeune