Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #12: Sides Marquetry incrustation

I have been back full time on our boxes for over a week now so I have some progress to report.

I have been selecting veneer out of our veneer cellar for the ebony background.

From the experience of the previous series I paperbacked the ebony as it is a very brittle wood. Better be safe than sorry

Then built the packs in 4 layers without forgetting the grease paper, one of my specialty in the mistake department. Teaching marquetry has been a great help as by reminding the students to not forget it, it seems I myself stopped forgetting to insert it.

When the packs are made I glue the design on

another lesson from the previous series is to drill the packs for the nails. So on this project I used red for the bridges, to be really visible, blue for the nails and a red dot for the entry points.

Next step is to cut the background on the chevy. Ebony is really tough on the blades, very abrasive.

I am cutting all the line away because I really do not want to have to trim the ebony, which may happen if I am to greedy for precision.

Everything is kept inside the pack with tape to keep the integrity of the pack and avoid breaking any piece of the fragile background.

When I am done cutting I remove the tape and carefully remove the plugs of waste.

Then I open the pack layer by layer. I keep the rest pressed at all time to avoid hygrometric variations, as I said before, I really do not want to have to trim my ebony. Also everything is kept in a tray as precaution until I am done incrusting a panel, you sometime do not know right away if you have broken a piece.

16 marquetry panels, some of them are on the other side of the assembly boards, 4 times 4 sides.

The green bone are still in the dye I will incrust them later

An I really like some of Patrick choices for the color palette, I think we improved from the first series, we always learn.

Next step, cutting the tops backgrounds and this is going to be a really difficult job. In yellow, the bone element, in green the green bone leaves and in blue the isolated background elements that I have to bridge in place and carefully keep.

This is a really exiting project

Cheers

-- Patrice lejeune