On the previous page you saw the main differences demonstrated concerning the cutting techniques required for dealing with the variations of veneer stock found between the USA and the UK.

Those saw cutting techniques have the inbuilt advantage of accurate packet cutting which guarantee you a uniformity of repetitive pieces that it would be extremely difficult to replicate with the scalpel method.

On the other hand, as we said earlier, you do have the freedom to perform spontaneous cutting with the scalpel blade that, in itself, would not really be possible with the saw methods. As you see, both methods have their own distinct advantages and disadvantages.

One further advantage with those thicker veneers is that you will stand less chance when doing your "finishing" of "rubbing through" your pictures' veneers into the base board as often happens with our thinner veneers, and, oh! what an awful sinking feeling that gives you when you see all your hard work disappearing in a cloud of sanding dust! 

Between some of the sheets of veneer a few pages of waxed paper have been inserted in order to lubricate the saw blade. It's much the same approach as we use when we dip the tip of our cutting blade in a piece of wax to lubricate the cutting point to avoid the "pulling" of the blade.

The packs have had "pilot" holes drilled in them at strategic positions in order to facilitate the insertion of the thin saw blade.

Each pack contains a different variety of veneer which, when each cut piece is assembled, will supply a specified amount of pre-cut items that will fit neatly and uniformly into the main body of the work, thus ensuring a continuity of design across the final project.

Unfortunately with the saw method you are rather prohibited from using the "window" method (which we favour for our blade cutting techniques). Obviously, if you so desired, you could make an attempt at the window method with the saw, but I rather think that the saw blade would very easily cut through your window veneer as well as your "insert" veneer without "batting an eyelid" if you allowed it to!

The blade follows the pencil line with great accuracy. It also gives you the added advantage of being able to cut through two adjoining parts of the design veneers at the same time and thus ensure a perfect fit when you join the veneers.

As you see here, the blades used for these saw cutting techniques are almost like fine wires. They are of a thinness that allows you to cut your veneers with great accuracy.

Although no blade cutting was used - or no "window method" - you will note that the cutting is very clean and the veneers have none the less, blended extremely well.

I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot to be said for the saw cutting methods used in the USA. As you see here, they can produce some excellent results. I think it would be nice to see what would happen if both methods were used on one picture - that would be very interesting!

What a monster of a press this is!

How many of us marquetarians would love to own such a superb item of machinery? I bet this couldn't half produce some tonnage of pressure - and look at the bed size of the beast - what dimensions of picture could you place in that I wonder?

"Silas Kopf Woodworking" manufactures bespoke furniture and their web site is well worth a visit at:{ http://www.silaskopf.com }

I would thoroughly recommend Silas's "saw cutting methods" DVD entitled "The Master Techniques of Marquetry" as an object lesson in how saw cutting should be done.
There is only one small restriction for UK residents and that is that the DVD is in the USA "NTSC" format and may not play properly in some of the early DVD players - however, if you have a computer with a DVD player in it, it should play perfectly in that.
All the photos in this article are taken directly from the DVD with no other intervention save for the gold frames, so you can see how good the actual visual quality of the disk really is - and the sound quality is also of that same high quality!

To order the DVD just visit the {"SilasKopf"} web site as shown above for further details.