My Own Marquetry Project with Paul Schürch

Paul Schürch recently returned to Phoenix at the Southwest Center for Craftsmanship to teach his marquetry class again.  This is the same class I took a couple years ago and wrote about here.  Yes, he's flipping a 1½" chisel in the air in the photo :)  He's a professional; don't try this at home.

Since this would be a repeat class for me, I sent him a private video beforehand to ask if I could come up with something more advanced and do that in the back of the class getting guidance from him as he milled about.  The video also included my project proposal.  He was all over that idea.  Plus I benefited from watching the original class all over again.

Decided on a selfie photo to prove I was there :)

My idea was to build a small half-round-ish table with four legs. This is the cartoon on my packet before cutting.  The red curve line indicates where the border of the table top is located. There's a leg in each of the back corners as well as on the front curves.

The birds are Downy Woodpeckers and the trees are Birch.

On its own, this marquetry wouldn't be much more advanced than the marquetry presented in the first iteration of this class other than total piece count.  This marquetry has a little over 80 pieces.  If you count the pieces in the drawing, you'll find many more, but that's where some explaining is needed.

The cartoon includes three lines sweeping down from the upper left corner. This divides the cartoon into 4 regions we'll call A, B, C, and (wait for it!) D from left to right.

The idea is that this marquetry progresses from an idea or drawing through increasing levels of detail while simultaneously going from grayscale through full color.

Section A is a very light Holly veneer and is a single piece; the bird and tree parts in that section will be drawn on the veneer after it is veneered to its substrate.

Section B has a light gray background and different shades of gray for the entire bird portion and whites for trees. Details will also be drawn in those "coarse" grayscale units.

Section C has a darker gray background and each detailed part of the marquetry is cut out of grays and whites. Nothing in this layer is drawn in after the fact.

Section D is normal marquetry in full color and detail.

But wait, there's more.

A woodworking friend we'll call the bearded one was nice enough to peel a bunch of Birch bark off his trees and mail it to me. In my project proposal to Paul, I mentioned wanting to use real bark in place of veneer for an added look and texture.

In preparing the packet for packet cutting, I included 2 sheets of veneer for the trees. One will be included in the initial glue-up then later routed out; it's necessary to have it in the initial glue-up since you need a full skin for proper parts placement and so you don't have some big place for glue to ooze out.  The second duplicate piece that matches the trees will be used to contour-cut the bark to the same size to be placed in the routed recess.  At least that's the theory at this point since I just completed a first pass at the skin on the last day of class.

This is the skin as of today; you are looking at the glue-side of the skin, which is why it is a mirror image. The section A piece (here on the right) will be replaced with a piece of Holly I had decided on after the packet was in one piece. Contour-cutting that one piece will be easy.

To explain contour cutting, remember that the packet is formed by carefully placing veneers between two pieces of chipboard (the gray board at the back of a pad of paper) with a copy of the cartoon glued to the top. Naturally when you cut out pieces, you get matching pieces of chipboard.  If you lose a piece or change your mind on a veneer, you can create a new packet with new veneer, glue the cut piece of chipboard to the top to be your pattern, then cut carefully around the contour to create a replacement part. The photo is of the back of the big packet I made for this; the bits of tape cover clenched brad nails that help keep things from moving since using too much tape gums up the blade and makes the packet thicker reducing the number of veneer sheets you can cut at once.

In my case, I also sand shaded a number of veneers. Two of the veneers in the B section I decided should not have been sand shaded but rather shaded with the pencil to hold to the cartoon's design. I'll contour cut those two pieces for replacements.

The birds lack detail unless you open the picture and look carefully as there are black pieces next to black pieces. However, I'll use white glue to glue it to the substrate so they will be outlined.

Paul had an additional suggestion for the tips of the wings' inner features: bleach the black out. I'll be trying that with two-part wood bleach on some scraps... I kept every scrap out of the packet in a special garbage for dumpster-diving replacement parts!

I'll say that the veneer for most of the wings is the prettiest I've seen: fumed figured Eucalyptus; the figure's striping looks like rolls of feathers so it was perfect. The image here is from CertainlyWood.com; the sheets I used looked like this but more black.  booyeah!

Darker wings like those further back behind foreground wings were done with a very thick Ebony veneer. Brittle, hard, difficult to knife for replacements. You could tell when the scrollsaw hit it. It won't be fun to level after the glue-up, but that's another day.

Here's the parts board partway through.

Various pieces for scale.

By the way, Paul recommends keeping the smallest detail to ¼"x¼"... I can see why!  I have a few smaller than that; a few is okay, but not after two extra-large Dunkin Donuts coffees.

I'll veneer this skin onto Medex, a water-proof higher-quality MDF.  This will be framed in solid wood, though I want to see the panel before deciding which species.

The apron will be a bent lamination. I already tried the bent lamination, but my glue (ahem, couple years old) failed.  I dropped the apron twice and it completely came apart and the 'glue' could be brushed off with your hand like powder. Bought some new from Paul so we're ready for round two.

My lamination uses an external form made of a couple "tubafors".  An external form means I'll have the glued-up lamination strips in the bag then clamp the bag to the form. When I did the dry-run, everything bent well, but with the glue, it needed coaxing with creative vocabulary. I'll cut a few notches where it will help before the next try.

An external form has a benefit that you don't need to put it in the bag. The bag can be smaller and the form doesn't need to withstand atmospheric pressures from all directions. Contrast this to an internal form. In this photo, Paul is creating an internal form he'll use in a class to be taught in November creating curved doors.

You can see the ribs every 4", two layers of ³⁄₈" bending ply, and a layer of smooth hardboard.

Another benefit of the external form is sometimes it is the only option. For example, Paul created a bent lamination for a spiral staircase. It was laminated on-site against the built staircase. In this case, he had a shop-made bag 6" wide by 30'+ long.

Here's the curved door internal form in the bag when it was getting the final hardboard layer glued on.

Back to the curved apron... it will also have a marquetry inlay in it. This is new for me. The marquetry will be simply some wings out of that fumed Eucalyptus inlaid directly into the Maple after turning the wings into plywood.  However, I'll follow the design of the main marquetry in that the inlay on the right side of the table will be complete.  On the left side of the table, the design will be drawn in.  In the front, we have the transition from drawn to full detail with the left half drawn, a small transition section in grayscale, followed by the full fumed Eucalyptus wings.

The legs will be tapered Maple legs.  There will be an inlay on each, I have some ideas, but will wait for the rest to be completed before deciding. However, they will follow the design with the left legs having drawn patterns, the right-front leg having inlay plus drawing while the right rear leg gets full detail.

Naturally, there are no photos yet of what's to come of this project. However, I've started recording the steps with the marquetry assembly. The episode(s) will cover everything after the basic marquetry portion; Paul's two-volume collection covers everything I've done to the marquetry so far. Get both volumes if you are new to veneer. Also remember that the booklet (or PDF for the download version) contains more information than is in the video so leaf through that, too.

Do keep in mind this is only my second marquetry. I thought my first (the infamous crocodile scene) was good.  That said, follow his DVDs and give it a go with your own cartoon or one from his site.

I have half of the next Angle Madness episode recorded for some finishing experiments so that's next on the block to record. I think this table will wait until I'm done with the Angle Madness build, which will go faster now that the day job calmed down.  Gee, just in time for Arizona summer heat :-/

Paul is my favorite instructor (don't tell Frank!)  Very lively, fast-paced, and with all the rope you get in marquetry to hang yourself, he has solutions for all of them and actively makes sure all of them happen in class so people learn.  That's an instructor.  Very funny guy, too, so we got along pretty well, which likely biases my opinion :)








Also, I ran across some lost photos of the Michael Fortune seminar last November. I've since added them to the article.  If you read it in an email subscription, you would have missed them.

What I learned from Frank Klausz (bis)

I recently took a class from Frank Klausz at the Southwest Center for Craftsmanship here in Phoenix (it's new!)  The class was on building a Queen Anne chest of drawers reproduction.  The chest of drawers was the height of a night stand so ideally you'd go home and build a second one and slap them on either side of a guest bed.

The class started with a lecture on project design covering wood technology, joinery, and finishing. A lot of great take-aways from this first-day lecture as all these concepts kept getting revisited throughout the class. In a related side-note, a week after the class, I received Frank's latest DVD as a gift (oooh, signed!)  I started watching it this week.  It starts with this exact same lecture and over 7 hours of Frank content... absolutely worth the price.

Naturally, we got demos of dovetailing; I've seen these a hundred times (you, too), but still worth the watch. What's interesting about Frank is the lack of unnecessary marking; if you add saddle lines or Xs to mark waste, you're wasting time, although one of his employees has helped him ease the stance against waste Xs.

Frank prefers to layout dovetails by eye. The inconsistencies are what clients are looking for in hand-made furniture. That said, even gaps in dovetails (uh, within reason!) are desirable.

In making reproduction furniture, you can certainly use machines, but all machine marks must be removed by hand tools.  Surfaces jointed and/or planed need touch-up with a hand smoother to ensure there's the subtle feel of plane tracks and no remnants of that helical-head planer.

Further, hidden surfaces are rather coarsely processed leaving visible plane tracks. These surfaces would include the back slats, underside of the whole cabinet, back of the bracket feet, etc.  Since jointing and planing stock was much more work than tossing it into a machine, time was only spent on visible surfaces. This is also the case with finishing though we know now that balancing the finish front and back is essential to better stability.

When planing the underside to give tracks to the texture, he'll often give a swipe or two against the grain to get small amounts of tear out.

Show surfaces get planed smooth, scraped, then lightly sanded with P180.

Good tip: when attaching a mirror to furniture or jewelry box lid, be sure to use mirror mastic; if you use silicone, you'll see spots on the mirror after a few years. Yeah, I might have done that mistake.

Sadly, this is my resulting cabinet... organization and student issues meant we were 2 days behind on the build.  Frank's taught this class before and it fits, with work, in the allotted 4 days (first day was a lecture day).  However that assumes more offline stock prep and sticking to the "intermediate-advanced" student requirement.  It's a new school with growing pains and I think this will be the last time this fumble happens.

Here is a photo of Frank showing us where the drawer face is attached to one drawer whose dovetail demo was done after class on the last day.  The bracket feet add a lot of elegance; if you recall my No Comment #1 build, the bombé box's sides and mini-bracket feet are all made the same way as these feet.  Pretty easy to do (you can see the exact same process in action on a smaller scale in No Comment #1 for the feet here except those feet had the bombé profile applied with a router bit; for these feet, the bombé profile was done on the table saw like the No Comment #1 box sides).

What remains for me to do here at home? Glue up the bracket feet, cut the base the case sits on, plane a bead around the drawer fronts, half-blind dovetail the fronts to the drawer, glue up the drawer bottom panel and bevel appropriately, ship-lap the back boards and nail them in place, apply a round-over on the top, and attach the top with floating blocks (shown).

The remaining work isn't difficult, but I'd rather have Frank around for the color commentary on how I'm doing it and get his always insightful comments on "and this is how you really do it" (be sure to heavily roll that R if you are reading that in his voice!)

If more work was left to do, I'd certainly consider doing all the molding with the HP-6 mini multi-plane.  The ogee of the base molding and cove that goes under the table top are all easily done with that plane and more fun than a router.  Certainly, I'll use that plane to apply the bead on the drawer fronts since I have the plane profile, but don't have a router bit in that dimension.  Lastly, rather than buy a ³⁄₈" radius round-over bit, I'll use my crowning plane... not the same profile, but the crown to me looks much nicer than a full round-over.

The drawers will get two brass pulls each; likely these pulls.

Whew, yeah, I needed another unfinished project :)

One evening during the class, 4 of us stayed with Frank and the director until 9:30 at night prepping a lot of stock, running moldings, and running the cove on the table saw. This was to try getting us caught up.  Starving, we ordered out some pizza, but like most pizza delivery places, they don't cut the pieces completely.  Fortunately, we had a chisel and mallet to take care of that.  Pretty sure that chisel won't be rusting anytime soon!

What I learned from Michael Fortune (bis)

I'm behind on this :)

Back in mid November, 2013, I got to take a 3-day seminar with Michael Fortune who came out to Phoenix apparently to avoid the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Okay, just kidding...

This seminar included bandsaw setup and demos along with discussion of how he designs and makes chairs.  Nothing hands-on; all lecture including a slide show of all his chairs and the jigs that make them (some chairs have over 50 jigs).

This article is a compilation of bits and pieces I wrote down that you may find interesting.

I realized that I'd be embarrassed to have him over to my shop since I have a relatively large bandsaw with a 5hp motor and a 1 ¼" Resaw King blade.  Michael's most-used bandsaw in his production shop is a simple 14" bandsaw with a ⅓ hp motor and a mud-flap under the table acting as a zero-clearance insert. In fact, he has four of them so they can be setup for a particular jig and left there until completed.  All the saws typically have ½" 3 tpi blades from BC Saw in Canada.

He's a big fan of having your blade cut parallel to the miter slot since his work is very jig-oriented.  Fortunately, I set my saw that way so I could have shown him that to get over the 5hp embarrassment :).  Rather than adjust your fence to get it parallel to the cut, take the extra time to loosen the table bolts and adjust the miter slot to be parallel; they adjust your fence, once.

An interesting observation he's made about bandsaw blades: with each resharpening, the set is reduced so they have a narrower kerf. They also track straighter so he keeps twice-resharpened blades for packet-cutting drawer dovetails.


An interesting side note: when working with exotics, they oxidize, which makes their surface a bit of a glue release causing glue-up problems. Commonly, people wipe the edge with acetone, but it's faster and works better to remove the oxidation with a quick swipe of P150 sandpaper before applying glue.

While I don't build furniture to be upholstered, Michael wrote an interesting article for Fine Woodworking where he covered using different densities of foam to create a more comfortable pad as well as discussing design elements for properly designing the pad. Who knew you could engineer foam padding?

Before moving on to how he builds chairs, he talked about steam bending. Only works with air-dried wood since kiln drying sets the lignin making bending unpredictable; this confirms what we hear on the Internet routinely, but I actually assumed the master of bending would have a trick for kiln-dried stock.

His chair arms and legs are steam bent while back slats are hot-pipe bent.

His steam chamber is kept at 200ºF+ for 45-60 minutes per inch (no less; no more).  Bending always uses a compression strap, but he prefers to bend a stick one way, move the strap, then bend it the opposite way. Once done, you can now remove the strap and bend it by hand into final position. This is something I need to try.

Always let the piece cool and set in a jig to hold it in place. No need to overbend; it will hold the final position.

When hot-pipe bending, keep the pipe between 200-212ºF.  You're looking to generate local steam.  It seems luthier sites want a 300-350ºF pipe for side-bending. Since steam is the key, perhaps local steam generated with a 212ºF pipe vs high-energy steam vapor from a 300-350ºF pipe softens the lignin faster. This is also an experiment I'd like to try.

While building a chair, Michael uses a level platform and box used for clamping parts to and taking measurements; platform and box both have centerlines drawn so distances from centerlines can be taken anywhere.  Everything works off the centerline.

At times you want to hold an item out in space because "that's where I want it".  To measure where a model leg is in space, he uses inclinometers.  The inclinometers give a degrees off plumb measurement. With this number, the leg can be clamped to a ladder-like fixture with the same inclination.

By measuring and clamping items spatially to the platform, you are creating a full-size model and are able to take measurements directly off it. Also allows for jig building for drilling or morticing on compound angles or for clamping finished assemblies together.

He described an interesting technique for matching curves in a chair. Picture an arm-to-back joint. The end-grain of the arm needs to be contour-cut or scribed to match the curve of the back.  In most commercial chairs, this joint is simply a compound angle with the attachment point on the back left flat.  If the back is curved, he clamps the back and arm in their final spatial orientation with a gap between the end-grain of the arm and the back.  He modifies a ³⁄₈"router collar by cutting it in half vertically (just the collar part :)  Put the collar on the router with a ¼" spiral bit.  Now run the router with the half-collar rubbing against the back so the exposed bit can cut the arm's end grain.  It will cut a matching curve in the arm. Technically the radius of the cut curve differs from the back's, but those radii are so large that the ±¼" error is negligible.

Oddly interesting side story (of which there were many!): The book "British Campaign Furniture" was all ready-to-assemble cabinets. Scandinavians took this to create a non-agricultural economy long ago. The first Ikea catalog has a lot of similarities.

While describing the design of his Ash chair, he mentioned that the black inlay was... sewer pipe :) He uses the pipe plastic for the inlay since it resists bleach used to bleach the Ash whiter.

When using a compression strap for steam bending on Walnut and Oak, the metal will stain the wood due to the tannins if left on too long. I wonder if a strip of packing tape between the strap and wood would help with this.

Since he makes his own hinges from brass stock, he has a small 9" Ryobi bandsaw setup with an ⅛" 14 tpi blade. Before cutting non-ferrous materials, he'll push a wax block into the blade to load it up then wax over the pencil line on the stock to continue the lubrication during the cut. Otherwise, the metal can stick to the blade.  This same bandsaw is used to cut mother of pearl for inlays. I'd like to try cutting mother of pearl on a bandsaw as the oscillating blade of a scroll saw tends to lift it out of your grip.

Since much of the lecture was watching him build a mock-up chair on the platform, my notes are a bit random from tangent stories.  Michael is returning to the Southwest Center for Craftsmanship next month to teach a chair building class, which includes building a chair rather than just discussing it.  Looking forward to that class.

Michael sells a CD that contain a copy of all his articles, some with extra material edited out by the magazine publishers.  There are also the class handouts for all the classes he teaches on the disc including documents on chair design, chair construction, design process, woodforming techniques, and jigs and fixtures, of which he has several for the bandsaw.  Well worth adding to your library.

Random Tidbits

A couple random things before going into the shop to record a review of a lot of great things from SenecaWoodworking.com (yes I had to wait for the A/C to bring it down a few degrees... 108º+F today!)

First, Mark Harrell of Bad Axe Tool Works let me preview an article he wrote for a magazine on how to tune your saw.  Loved the article since it explained everything you need to do for 99% of the fixes he does as a Saw Doc.  The article assumes you're not into posturing by chatting about saw fleam angles over coffee, which is great because I could never learn the secret handshake of that social group.

The article isn't published yet and I can't tell you where or when it will be (I was sworn to secrecy over a table of fleam angles), but he followed up with a great article about re-tensioning a backsaw's spine posted to his site.  This may or may not be similar to part of the secret article <wink>

If you score a nice backsaw at a fleam-arket (ah I get it now...), this article will walk you through re-tensioning and straightening out the plate.  The right margin on his site lists other DIY articles including one on unlocking a frozen nut; handy for our Canadian readers.

Next up, a magazine article I was behind on!  My friend Rutager West wrote an article for Popular Woodworking's December 2012 issue (this is for the print issue, which may no longer be available when you read this).  In the article, Rutager shows you how to inlay a checkerboard pattern on a curved radius.  The plane in the lower-right photo is the HP-6v2 mini multi-plane I love; that profile is the corner bead although the corner cove (or any of the corner profile!) would look equally exciting on a box.

The article is a "corner bead" version of a well-documented thread Rutager did on the Bridge City forum where he put the inlay on a face bead (this is the profile I used for the Onyx frame in No Comment #2).

Other good threads on using the HP-6v2 profiles for inlays include revealing a wood under the multi-bead; I've used this many times after reading this; an excellent effect.

Last of the OPT ("other people's tidbits"), Scott Meek makes nice wood-bodied planes. He's decided to auction off this smoother with at least 50% of the proceeds going to the Moore, Oklahoma relief fund.  Might be a great way to get one of these for less than retail!  I have a watch on this.  Hopefully the bids will be out of my range so I don't have to do that nervous last-minute-of-auction sniping.

EDIT: Here is the updated eBay link; eBay had erroneously deleted Scott's auction since they are being cautious of any auction for "Moore charity" since so many were false.

For me, my list of videos to roll has grown almost too fast this past week.  That said, over the next two months, I should have 4 new Festool reviews along with the very interesting Seneca Woodworking reviews I'll be rolling after hitting publish.  This without forgetting to finish the No Comment #2 build videos and get the drawer assemblies in place on Angle Madness.  I need to quit my day job!

Speaking of videos, thanks for letting me hit 3,000+ subscribers on YouTube!

WIA'12-Pasadena: Personal Tour with Paul Schürch

The week spent in Pasadena for WIA'12 included several side trips besides WIA itself.  When I think of the highlights of the week, WIA is actually pretty low on the list!  The number one highlight of the week was going to Paul Schürch's shop for a tour of his projects and shop in beautiful Santa Barbara.  As I eluded to before, I brought along two friends thinking we'd be there for maybe a couple hours.  Eight hours later, Paul and my friend Roger were both getting close to the doghouse with their wives otherwise it might have lasted even longer!

For me it was special to hang out with two creative minds I greatly admire; Paul being one, Roger being the other.  I got to know Paul earlier this year when I took a fantastic 5-day class in marquetry from him (read this post on the Paul Schürch class for more details!)

We started out just in the shop with general introductions and looking around.  Roger spotted some interesting work up on a back cabinet and the banter started.  "What was this for?" "Really? For what project?" "How do you know her?!" "When was that?"  After several minutes of this going back and forth, they realized they had bid against each other on a project.  Roger was a primary bidder while Paul was subbed by a bidding designer.

But that's when it got even more interesting as they exchanged details, difficulties, and solutions for their respective submissions.  Hopefully this introduction will get them collaborating in some way in the future (and I want to be the fly on the wall for those design sessions!)

For part of the afternoon, Paul took us up into a storage area above the shop where many of the projects you see on his site's gallery page are stored.  We got a personal tour of each item and all our questions answered.  I liked these projects before, but like them even more now that I got to see them up-close, see how smooth they operate, and the caliber of marquetry (which can be assumed with Paul).


We also got to see some of his projects in process.  No video of those, but they'll be impressive once you see them in his photo gallery.  I'm looking forward to seeing the ones using stone.  I'm hoping he'll someday do classes in pietra dura, or stone inlay.  There are lessons learned on dealing with stone in the dialog of the video; getting those in a class would be fantastic.

The video below was taken of that tour.  I'll apologize up front that we were very close quarters literally swapping places with each other to move around.  That said, there's camera motion I don't like.  I'm super sensitive to that and it doesn't bug me so hopefully it's okay with you.  Just focus on something far away whenever you hear me 'ooh' or 'ahh'.



Here's a link to the video for my email subscribers.

WIA'12-Pasadena: Decorative Arts at LACMA

The last entry showed you the Metropolis II exhibit at LACMA.  We actually went there to see woodworking and decorative arts, but Hot Wheels are hard to resist.

Today's clip is a compilation of many short clips taken in LACMA's decorative arts wing.  The place is huge!  While there is a lot of art that is nice to see, I didn't film it all.  Though I wish I took a clip of the big billiard balls... next trip!

The photos in this posting are actually frames from the video so they aren't as crisp as a camera shot; watch the video, though, to get swung around into places that are difficult to see unless you're a camera on the end of a long arm :)

Because the museum is so dimly lit, I had to digitally process each clip to get some light into the shadows then color correct because of the processing.  Because of that, you'll see more, but some colors may not be as true to reality as I'd like.

The last clip of the video is actually from the Getty museum; it is a table top in pietra dura, otherwise called stone inlay. Gorgeous colors.

If you are in the area, LACMA is a great place to spend a day.


Hopefully the captured frames from the clip have tempted you... click play below for the real deal :)



There'll be at least one more video from the trip; it'll be the private tour of Paul Schürch's shop and previous projects.  I'm leaving it to last because it's driving Andrew nuts to wait :)

For email subscribers, here's the video page.