This first one of Alf's tips nicely complements Dave Walker's tutorial on mitres and stringers. Dave demonstrated to you on how to make perfect mitres complete with stringers, but as Alf suggested, when you cut your mitres from the over-lapping veneers they can tend to split unless precautions are taken to ensure that the cutting blade carries on it's cutting onto a "false corner" support. This false corner prevents the veneers from breaking and splitting due to lack of support beneath them. Dave did indeed actually use a false corner support when cutting his mitres as you will see in the photos accompanying the article (fig 19 in the article actually) but although your attention was drawn to the use of the false corner in the text, Alf felt that it was very important to fully highlight the problems that you will encounter if you forget to make use of the "false corner" support.

As you will notice in each of the following photos, Alf has made each false corner a different thickness in order to accommodate and allow for, different thicknesses in your various pictures' base boards. You should also note that when you cut your mitres you should start the cut from the inner part of the mitre and finish it by cutting through the over-lapping veneers to the outer part of the mitre which should be "sitting" on the false corner and thereby buffering the outer edges of the mitre from breaking and splitting.

As this series of lectures progresses Alf will advise you of other hints and tips devised to help you with your marquetry. Alf has had many years experience of teaching marquetry techniques and he has won many awards with his marquetry pictures. It is always crowded when Alf does one of his marquetry demonstrations and lectures at our Redbridge rooms, but we are pleased to say that we have recorded this latest series of Alf's lectures and we are now incorporating them as edited tutorials on this web site, we trust you are enjoying them.