The “stack” we will be sawing into elegant patterns: plywood or mat-board outer sheets, pewter and brass sheet, waxed paper, and “tordonshell.”
I am very pleased to confirm that Joshua Farnsworth over at Wood and Shop has scheduled my Boullework Marquetry class for this upcoming year. I’ve been working on persuading him for some time, this one is pretty far outside the comfort zone for the school, so I urge you to support us in this listing.
We’ll be making some of my own invention, “tordonshell.” I’ll have pre-made shell for everyone to use in the class; this is for the students to take home.
I look forward to seeing you in Earlysville VA, September 20-22, 2027.
Every Spring, Winterthur Museum hosts a Furniture Symposium, and I have been invited (again). I will present a demonstration on the making of Gragg’s Elastic Chairs during this year’s event, April 23&24, 2027. (I say “again” because I was invited to present five years ago but was then disinvited when I declined to comply with their Fauci Flu protocols.)
I think my presentation/demonstration will be about 75-90(?) minutes, which should be quite the adventure. You can follow the event developments at winterthur.org. Just go to the “Calendar” page.
I hope to see you there.
Once I get my teaching and presentation schedule finalized for 2027 I will post it here.
It was not thePictures From An Exhibition but rather pictures from an exhibition of traditional wood finishing as last month I taught another iteration of my class at Joshua Farnsworth’s Wood and Shop classroom. Oddly, three days is barely enough time to scratch the surface of the topic while still changing the students’ mindsets pretty profoundly.
So I present, Pictures From An Exhibition of Historic Wood Finishing, featuring performers (students) from all over North America.
I actually watch a lot of Japanese woodworking videos and welcome this new tutorial approach. As much as I like the videos in Japanese shops, they are usually in Japanese and mostly without translation. Since I neither read nor speak Japanese this English chyron approach is most welcome. Not that I do much better with English…
I’ll be one of the presenters at next month’s 2026 edition of Plane Wellness. If you are in the region of Butler PA May 16-17 and have the inclination, we would love to have you join us. I learned about the organization from a class student a couple years ago and wholeheartedly agree with their mission statement, Improving Mental Wellness Through Woodworking. And who could not use a little extra dose of mental wellness these days?
My presentation will include (of course) the finishing process and the beauties of polissoiring.
The list of presenters is impressive and include a lot of voices I do not know, so I am especially looking forward to being challenged, informed, and encouraged.
The day began with smoothing the parquetry compositions, first with toothing planes, both manufactured and home-made, then followed by blocks of pumice.
The next step was to lay out a simple banding knotwork design for one corner as an exercise.
Excavating for the inlay came next, followed by cutting and fitting the elements of the design.
In the end everyone went home with examples of the techniques to apply to their upcoming projects.
If this technique interests you I hope you will join me for next year’s class on October 1-3, 2026.
Opening up the panels glued up the night before is always a thrill for the students to see their work coming to fruition.
The next step is to trim the fields to make them good rectangles for the banding followed later by the borders. A variety of veneer saws were at work, ranging from pricey French saws to inexpensive Japanese ones. They all work.
The perimeter banding was applied and adhered with 192 gws glue, and the banding held in place with aluminum push pins that are surprisingly similar to those used by craftsmen 250 years ago.
Throughout the day and overnight, if a panel was not being worked it was placed in front of a box fan to drive off as much moisture as possible, to harden the glue under the parquetry. That strategy was somewhat successful.
Last month, for the first time in many years, I was able to offer an Introduction to Parquetry class at Joshua Farnsworth’s Wood and Shop near Charlottesville VA. We plan for me to offer the workshop again next year.
I had two exercises in mind for the students, all based on sawn veneer edge strips from boards.
The strips were then cut into identical 60-120-60-120 parallelogram “diamonds” or lozenges with a simple jig and a dovetail saw.
NB/ mea culpa – over the years I have attended and spoke at countless woodworking clubs and guilds, and invariably there is a show-n-tell session, and invariably they feature prominently some elaborate jig a member made to do this or that function. (Yes I know I used “invariably” twice in one sentence. That is a purposeful literary flourish.) In the old days I would just roll my eyes and tell myself, “That’s not woodworking.” Then we started the Roubo Transalation Project. Turns out the world of the ebeniste’ was all about jigs and patterns. To quote LBJ, “I reserve the right to be smarter than I used to be.”
Once the pile of lozenges got big enough, they laid out X and Y axes on a piece of paper to guide them then started assembling the composition by gluing down the lozenges to the paper with 135 gws hide glue.
Once the composition was large enough to cover the “field” of the substrate panel, in this case 1/2″ Baltic Birch plywood, the working face of the parquetry (ultimately the verso) was slathered with 192 gws hide glue, followed immediately by the face of the substrate panel.
Then the wo glued surfaces were brought together and clamped using another 1/2″ panel as the caul and a double layer of corrugated cardboard as a gasket.
The exercises proceed apace, building finishes and the skll set to accomplish them.
I fully expect to reprise this workshop at Joshua’s next summer, along with perhaps a couple other offerings. Introduction to Parquetry is taking place the end of next week, so come on and join us.
Recent Comments