Recently I was asked to do a demo for Leeds Marquetry Group (LMG) on how I created marquetry jewellery. So I created a quick video demo of how to make a simple marquetry flower. The trouble with marquetry demos is that it’s difficult for a lot of people to see what you’re doing at the same time. And with miniature marquetry demos, that goes double!
(If you want to compare it with the laser-cut version of a marquetry flower that I did a few years ago, here is the link.)
So I’ve included the video here, to show what I demonstrated.
It’s definitely not perfect because it’s just a quick demo that I threw together in the space of about an hour – but I’m pleased with how snugly the wooden pieces fit together. Remember as well that the flower’s diameter is only about 14mm. So it looks worse through a magnifying glass and blown up on this screen!
My overall advice to the group was basically that there’s no magic to creating tiny marquetry designs for jewellery. You just need a cutting mat, a sharp knife, and a magnifying glass. Then just keep hacking away at the wood until it does what you want.
Even with the miniature dogs that I put into cufflinks, there weren’t any surprising hints or tips that I could give to the members of the marquetry group. I honestly just look through my magnifying glass and keep hacking tiny bits off the wood. It’s almost like carving it, but at a very small scale – until it looks like it’s the right shape.
More marquetry news this week: I’ve won first prize in the “Beginners’ Applied” category of a marquetry competition – wow!
I’ve been really enjoying my membership of the Leeds Marquetry Group, and last week I entered their annual competition. I submitted the Yorkshire Rose coaster, which was the very first marquetry project that I’d ever completed (and which I wrote about in July here).
I created the design myself, and based the petals on heart shapes. Then found a really pesky, tricky wood to cut it out of. (For such a therapeutic hobby, I do seem to find myself inventing a surprising number of new swear-words.) Then I covered the coaster with a heat-resistant and water-resistant melamine sealant, gave it to my dad as a birthday present, only to pinch it back again to enter it into the competition.
As mentioned in this post, I have recently taken up marquetry and I’m really enjoying it. I am now always on the lookout for new projects. This week I’ve combined marquetry with another hobby (fishkeeping), and have cut out a goldfish design. Because I’m still at the learning phase I’m cutting everything by hand, but at some point I’ll probably start to combine hand-cutting with laser-cutting.
This is what I’ve managed so far:
Stages of making the marquetry goldfish
First I chose a piece of veneer. It’s impossible to tell from this photo, but the piece had been dyed to a light greeny-blue shade. Once I’d found the nice wood I traced a basic fish design onto it.
Using the ‘window method‘ of cutting, I started with the dorsal fin. I deliberately made bottom end of the cut longer than it needed to be, so that I could use the inserted fin as part of the window of a later section. So it didn’t matter that there was a gap at the bottom left of the fin.
Selecting a suitable piece of wood by viewing it through the window
Then basically I kept repeating the steps of:
cutting a window shape out of the greeny-blue veneer (e.g. fins, body, tail sections)
viewing the orange-coloured veneer through the window so I could find a woodgrain that looked as fishy as possible
using that window as a guide for cutting the right size of orange-colour veneer to insert into the window
glueing (?gluing? Both spellings look wrong) the freshly-cut orange veneer piece into the window.
Cut a window, find a suitable grain of wood, cut the shape, and glue it into the window
Wonderful woodgrain
This is one of the things I like most about marquetry; the way the woodgrain pattern makes each piece absolutely unique. Here the grain not only has lines in it but wavy lines, so the goldfish tail looks even more realistic. And of course, the lines in the greeny-blue wood look nice and watery.
More fins being added:
Pectoral fins cut and inserted:
Bottom section of fish tail has been cut and inserted. Again I was pleased to find some grain that had a bit of a wave to it.
I thought I’d gone horribly wrong here, because it looked like I’d added a clown’s nose to the fish:
…but when the body was cut and inserted, I was very relieved because the nostril thing didn’t stand out much after all. (Note: at this stage the inserted body-section replaced the bottom of the dorsal fin, so removed the previous gap.)
I was also quite chuffed with the way that the woodgrain looked a bit like fish scales:
Fin-ishing touches
Nearly finished, with the mouth and gill inserted, and a window cut out for the eye. The single mouth-and-gill shape was a really difficult shape to cut out. I could have made things easier by cutting it as two pieces instead of one, but fortunately nothing broke while I was doing it.
I forgot to take a picture of how I cut the eye, because it all got a bit tricky at this stage. Here is the finished marquetry goldfish:
The outer section of the eye is just under 5mm in diameter so was fiddly enough to cut by itself, but then I had to cut a 2-ish mm hole out of the middle of it so that I could insert the smaller, darker circle. No finesse at all was involved; I had to just hack away with my scalpel until I’d managed to carve out a hole from the wood.
Having mentioned in a previous post that I’d started a new hobby of marquetry this year, I was excited to find out this week that one of my competition entries for the Great Yorkshire Show had won a prize. I really am addicted, now!
The Leeds Marquetry Group encouraged all of this year’s (2022) beginners to submit some of our pieces to the GYS, so for the last few months I’ve been tinkering away with several projects and trying to expand my range of skills.
I turned up at the woodworking tent of the show hoping to have a nose around and see what everyone else had been working on this year, and was amazed to discover that I’d won first prize in the category of “applied” marquetry:
(Photo taken by Eileen)
I’m still sure there must have been some mistake! But what I really loved was that all four of the initial-lettered people were there to see their coasters. I hadn’t shown any of the coasters to Rob (husband), Eileen (mum) or Brian (dad) during the time that I was making them, so there were nice surprises all round.
I created the design by first printing out the letters in a giant font size and then drawing square borders around them. Then I used Saral transfer paper to copy the design onto the wood veneer sheets.
Try, try, try again
This was my first ever attempt at hand-cutting wood veneer. When I cut out the K and the background I was fairly happy with the outcome…
…but then noticed that I’d cut the letter too close to the edges of the background veneer (above), so had to start again.
…only to decide that I’d like to make a whole family set of initial letter coasters – at which point I realised that I didn’t have enough of those two veneers above (cherry and birch??) to make a matching set. So I had to start again again.
Favourite wood so far…
I went up to LMG’s wood store, and discovered a lovely veneer. Fiddleback sycamore. Apparently it’s called that because it’s used on the backs of violins and other similar musical instruments. It is a very very attractive wood:
Woof. It’s got a silky, wavy pattern somehow at right angles to the grain.
For a good contrast with the sycamore, I chose a much darker and more grainy-looking wood. I think it’s sapele wood.
Making things (more difficult)
To make life difficult for myself, I decided to try to keep the outer section of the sycamore veneer in one piece. But I also wanted to learn how to apply a border strip (‘stringing’?) around the main design as well, so I mitred some thin sections of the sapele wood and somehow got them to fit between the pieces of the sycamore veneer.
Work in progress, with the two new woods.
That was actually the second most difficult part of the whole project. I must have wasted about 10 strips of wood trying to get them to the correct width and length and fitting nicely together and properly mitred.
By the time I started on the letter R coaster I was a bit more confident with my cutting skills:
…but was horrified by the gaps between the veneers when I held them up to the window:
Fortunately my new friends at LMG assured me that when I actually glued the veneers together and stuck them to the coaster itself, the gaps wouldn’t be as noticeable. Partly because the glue fills in the gaps anyway, but also because the wet glue causes the wood to soften and change shape a bit. The tutors also kindly reminded me that nobody else in the world was going to hold one of my marquetry pieces up to the light to inspect it. Duh.
As part of my marquetry adventure I also discovered a new phenomenon: my pieces always look better from the back than they do from the front!
This year (2022) I started a new hobby. I am now a marquetry enthusiast (in addition to all of my other craft addictions).
I moved house in 2021 (from the south to the north of England) during the covid lockdowns, so for a very long time I wasn’t able to start any new hobbies that involved seeing real people. But in February 2022 I was wishing for a new group or club to join in Yorkshire, and discovered that Leeds Marquetry Group were restarting their beginners’ sessions that very same week. So I signed up. And it turns out that marquetry is a brilliant pastime for me, because it seems to combine a lot of the skills that I’ve already been building up via my other crafts, over the years.
Through my papercutting experiments I’ve already learned how to use a scalpel to do some very intricate cutting…
…and through my lasercutting artworks I’ve learned some of the characteristics and limitations of working with different types of wood veneers:
So marquetry basically involves a mash-up of my existing craft skills.
The very first project I completed was a Yorkshire Rose coaster:
As with my papercutting projects there are quite a few errors that really jump out at me when I look at this piece, but overall I’m really pleased with it. I designed it myself (starting out with petals that were based on heart shapes) then cut it by hand, and there were some really challenging sections in it.
The best thing about Leeds Marquetry Group is that everyone is so friendly and helpful. In just a few months I’ve learned more about cutting, gluing, sanding and varnishing wood than I could have ever learned from books or the internet. I’m looking forward to learning even more, over the next year.
Marquetry is the art of applying thin veneers of wood to another surface (usually also wood), to create a design.
The method below is a fairly quick and ‘cheaty’ way to make marquetry-effect designs with a laser cutter. I may write a post later on a different method, but in the meantime:
First you need at least two different types of wood, in different shades. One should be a very thin veneer-thickness wood (e.g. approx 1mm or 1/32in thick). The other should be at least twice as thick as the veneer wood (e.g. approx 2mm or 1/16in thick).
For example, your thicker piece could be a light birch wood, and the darker wood could be a special veneer wood.
The wood I used in this case comes from www.wood-supplies.com. I’m not 100% certain which wood I used, but I think it was a sheet of 1/8in thick mahogany and a strip of 1/32in thick boxwood:
1/8in mahogany sheet and 1/32in boxwood strip
You will need:
Laser cutter 🙂
Piece of wood approx 3mm (1/8in) thick (e.g. laserable wood)
Thin piece of wood approx 1mm (1/32in) thick, that contrasts in colour with the other piece of wood (e.g. veneer wood )
Step 1: Create a design with whatever software you happen to use for your laser system (e.g. I use CorelDraw). I am making a simple flower design here, so I’m going to draw a basic flower with a circle ‘insert’ for the middle:
Marquetry flower design for laser cutter.
Note: As well as the design above, I also needed to design an ‘insert’ shape to put in the round hole above. So I duplicated the black circle and gave it an outline (see step 2 for illustration).
Step 2: Cut the insert shape from the veneer- thickness wood. (If it’s a very small piece, make sure you include a ‘sprue’ in the design, so it doesn’t drop through the cutting bed. For more info on creating sprues, please check out this article.)
Centre of laser-cut marquetry flower
Step 3: measure the thickness of the piece you just cut.
Circle of boxwood is 0.79mm thick
Step 4: (Optional) If you’re starting from scratch then etch a test piece first. Measure how deep the etching is, then adjust the power/speed settings as necessary. You need to etch just a little bit deeper than the depth of the thin (veneer wood) piece. This is to take into account the layer of glue that will be used. So if your measurement of the veneer wood piece was 1mm thick, then you need to etch the design into the thicker wood so that the etched design is approx 1.2mm deep.
If there is too much charring or the etching doesn’t go deep enough even on 100% power, you may need to etch the same design again on top of the first etching, but perhaps on a slightly lower power setting. (e.g. if your veneer is 1mm thick but the etching is only 0.7mm deep, then you can etch the same design again but using less power the second time, or the second etching will be too deep.) Tip: DO NOT MOVE the piece of wood when you are measuring it, because if you need to etch again to go deeper then you want to make sure the second etch goes in exactly the same place as the first etch.
Tip: To measure the depth of the laser-etched circle, you can use the little gauge that sticks out of the end of the micrometer.
Step 5: Etch the design (the small circle, in this example) into the thicker wood. As mentioned above, you need to etch very slightly deeper than the thickness of the thinner (veneer wood) piece, to take account of the glue later. So if your measurement of the veneer wood piece was 1mm thick, then you need to etch the design into the thicker wood so that the etched design is approx. 1.2mm deep. Tip: If you’re etching twice, DO NOT MOVE the piece of wood after the first etch, because the etched design will be out of position when the finished design is cut.
Step 6: Cut the outer shape (the flower shape, in this example) from the thicker wood. Again, my laser and wood will be different to yours so I haven’t given the power/speed settings here, but if you are cutting the thicker wood for the first time then try a test piece first.
Etch the circle to the correct depth first, then cut out the shape.
Step 7: Apply a very thin layer of glue inside the etched design.
Spread a thin layer of glue in the etched hole
Step 8: Insert the thin veneer piece into the etched hole, and leave the glue to dry (time will depend on the glue manufacturer’s guidelines).
Lighter-coloured wood has been inserted into the etched shape.
Step 9: Sand the surface of the marquetry piece so that the different woods are exactly level with each other and show no scorch marks from the laser.
Finished laser-cut marquetry flower. (I should have taken more care to make sure the two grains followed the same direction though…)
That’s it! Hope you liked the article. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to share them in the comments section, or via the contact form.
