|
"Fine
Lines and how I do them"
by Peter Jones
|
|
At
some time or other, virtually every marquetarian will find the need to
incorporate very thin lines of contrasting colour into a piece of their
work. Examples being things like hair in portraits or rigging in the old
sailing ships of yore, I’m pretty sure you can think of a few more
yourselves, anyway, the method I’m going to describe to you is the one
taught to me by that very famous and sadly missed marquetarian, the late
Eric Horne.
To start from first
principles, obviously the first thing you require is the thinly shaved
"line" of veneer to use for the fine line. This is achieved by shaving a
thin "line" from the side of a piece of veneer with a small plane. The
thickness of the final line will be dependent upon the setting of the blade
of the plane so do bear that in mind when setting your plane up. My plane is
a small model making item about 2.5" long and the cutting blade I’m using is
actually a razor blade, I wouldn’t recommend using the standard steel blade
that comes with normal planes as these blades tend to break the veneer
rather than cutting it like a razor blade does, after all, you want a nice
clean cut line rather than a jaggedly cut line which couldn’t be guaranteed
to do the job required of it.
The next priority is to
try to ensure that you use a straight grained veneer for your fine line’s as
these will form the preliminary "watch springs" of veneer without breaking
into splinters and dust.
Peter demonstrates how to place a piece of
veneer in the clamp
Now an important tip
when setting up your piece of veneer to shave the fine lines from is to wet
the veneer first before proceeding on to the next step. Once your veneer is
damp place it between two parallel lengths of wood as shown in the diagram.
This clamping arrangement has a small hinge at one end, thus making it an
easier proposition for holding the veneer in place for when you want to
"run" your plane along it to cut your fine lines from the piece of veneer.
You can, of course, place this clamping arrangement as described above, in a
vice of some sort (a small model makers one would be ideal) and in doing so
thus protect your delicate marquetarians fingers from being inadvertently
shaved whilst performing the fine line cutting operation. As I said earlier,
if your veneer is wet then the lines you’ve just cut out will uncurl a lot
easier when you come to flatten them out before leaving them to dry.
Peter shows you how to "shave" a curl from
a piece
of veneer in the clamp
When dry, with some
grades of veneer, I go over them with some 240 grade of glass-paper just to
smooth off any remaining roughness.
So now, to cutting the
insert line in your picture for where you are going to want to place your
fine line. Make the cut in the same way as you would normally do for the
majority of your marquetry work, but this time run your blade back along the
same cut with a slight angle on both sides of the cut, so that in effect you
make a wider sort of "V" cut on the line you previously cut. This procedure
gets somewhat easier with a little practise just try to make sure that you
try to follow your original cut as accurately as possible. Obviously the
better that you can follow the original cut with your blade held at an
angle, the better your finished line will be.
And so to the tricky
bit, I normally use a pair of tweezers to insert the "line" into the cut.
Again this also gets easier with practise. When you have succeeded in
placing your line in the vacant cut, don’t drop your glue directly on the
cut because this could quite easily "wipe out" your newly inserted line from
within it’s nice new home in your carefully constructed marquetry picture
and then all your hard work will have been for nothing. The secret to
resolving this problem is another of the little tips that Eric Horne gave
me, and that is to apply glue to just one side of the cut and then with your
finger gently "roll" the glue along the cut.
|
