The Bespoke Woodworker

I’ve departed at this point from working on the 2nd tray, as I’ve decided to go another route.   Rather than a veneered surface, I’m going to inaly a compass rose into a solid floating panel of curly maple for the tray bottom.  Look for that in a future post

In the meantime, I’ve put a nice thin layer of shellac with a tiny hint of dark vintage maple transtint (~ 1 drop:dixie cup of shellac) onto the panel, then allowed it to dry thoroughly.  Then I very very lightly sand that back with very high grit paper or even steel wool.

I finished it up with 3 coats of Polyacrylic from General Finishes.  I brushed this on.  For a while, I’ve been scared of brushing, preferring to wipe on an oil finish, which I find a lot less risky.   One my favorite ’simple’ finishes is Watco Danish Oil, but it takes quite a while for oil finishes to completely cure.  Poly is a lot less forgiving, but provides far better protection than a danish oil type finish, which is necessary for a serving tray, as you’ll be exposing it to light heat and the possibility of spills.

You can see the tinted shellac gives a nice hue to the panel and makes the figure stand out better.

Once the panel was fully dry, I went back to the shop and assembled the tray.

Note that the tray sides themselves are still unfinished.  The dovetails themselves needed a little bit of cleanup, and the sloping sides of the ends needed some blending into the tray sides.

The tools I used to do the blending are all visible in the photo.   Some light paring, scraping, and sanding gave us a clean surface ready to finish.  The tray itself will receive no finish treatment other than the Polyacrylic topcoat.  The Padouk looks great all by itself.  To prevent too much extra finish from pooling on the tray, I taped it off.

And now with two coats of polyacrylic.

Fin!

The stock is very uniform in color and straight grained, so there wasn’t much to match, patternwise, but I laid it out anyway just t
o be on the safe side.

I then roughed out and pattern routed the ends and the handles.

With the rough shaping done, it was on to joinery.    I ganged up the long sides, and cut the tails all at once.

At this point, it appears I may have stomped on the photos of the pin cutting.  Suffice to say, it was pretty vanilla work.

Tapped together, we’ve got a nice square tray frame.  It even sat flat!

At this point, I felt comfortable moving on to the tray bottoms.  For the first tray, I’m going to do simple veneered MDF panel of f
igured anigre I picked up in a bargain bin at the local Rockler.  There’s a little bit of splitting and wrinkling, but the flitch wa
s quite inexpensive, so I don’t mind!

I gave myself a straightedge with which to bookmatch.

Then I taped and glued the panel

While the panel was in the bag, I routed a 5/16″ groove in the base of the tray frame on the router table.  5/16″ is a nice fit of a
the substrate plus 2 layers of veneer, as the MDF is never perfectly 1/4″.

I cleaned up the panel edges from the veneering, cut to size, and did a little fitting and tuning, and then performed a dry fit.

Looking good!   Next segment, I’ll pre-finish the panel, then do a glueup, joint cleanup, and final finishing.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to take this part slowly.  There are no shortcuts that leave you with a great inlay!

Most commercial veneer is thin, 1/42nd or so.  So you don’t have a lot of room to work with, once you’ve inlaid the compass rose.  That means you need to make sure your inlay surface is ready to go.   I used this maple panel with a little bit of curl to it.  This has been pre-sanded to 320.

You start by solidly taping down the inlay in its final position.  Note the X on the work.  I’ve also drawn a corresponding X (unseen) on the edge of the work so that I can return this to the correct position later.   Although your inlay may seem to be uniform, I assure you, it is not!

Then you begin to trace the inlay with an exacto knife (with a fresh blade) around the outside edge of the inlay.  When using an exacto like this, you want to make sure you’re using the inlay itself as a reference surface, and that you are performing a light scoring cut.  You want to cut to the depth of the inlay (a little deeper actually works fine), but you don’t want to try and do this in one pass!  You start with a light scoring cut, then you go over it again and again until you’ve got depth.  If you try this all in one pass you’re going to do one or both of these bad things:  You’ll slice into the inlay, or you’ll cut off path off into the inlay surface.

I tried to show, in this fuzzy photo, the light scoring cut.

Here you can see I’ve finished the scoring of the outside of the inlay.   Before I route, I like to use a pencil (a chalk bag also works) to highlight the lines so that they’re easier to see when I am routing.  A work lamp you can position closely also helps in the next step.

Router prep, I use a 1/4″ downcut spiral bit, followed by a 1/8th, to remove the bulk of the waste inside the inlay.  I think the Festool OF1010 is one of the better routers for this step, because you can index your zero against the work surface, as in this photo.  (See the screw pillar on the right, with the bit resting on the surface, but not scratching it.)

Then, with the router locked into position, you take a piece of scrap veneer the same width (don’t use the veneer tape covered inlay itself, as you’ll cut too deep!), and you slowly raise the microadjust on the depth stop until the veneer just barely goes in between the post and the depth stop.

You begin slowly, working around the outside, then eventually clearing up to the center with the 1/4″ spiral bit.

You want to stay clear of the lines.  You aren’t cutting TO the lines, just fairly close.  I’ll be chucking up a 1/8th afterwards for cleanup and to get closer into the corners.  Once you’ve got the inlay routed as close as you dare, you switch to chisels for cleanup.    This is a similar task to cleaning up your dovetails, but there won’t be any mallet work involved.  A sharp chisel and hand pressure should be sufficient to free up the 1/42nd inch you need to remove to seat the inlay.  If you’ve taken good time to clean up the edges of the inlay, you can use a large chisel on most sides.    Since you’ve cut deeply enough with your exacto, you should not need to cut the outside edge, as in this photo.

But merely flip the chisel, using your bearing surface to make the chisel work like a chisel plane, and slowly pare to your xacto line.

You can see I’ve finished one of the minor points on the top right in this photo.   This can be a fairly slow process, but ultimately worth the painstaking time.  Here’s a closeup of the same point.

There are a few hairs of grain on the right side that I’ll carefully trim back with the exacto.  After another hour or two of careful work, I’ve finished the first pass in the inlay’s final resting place.

Now I begin the dry fit.   Keep in mind the inlay is thin wood.  Once the water based glue comes in contact, there will be a tiny bit of gap filling going on, so the inlay should not be so tight you have to force it in place.  Take the time to check each of the major and minor points of the compass rose and make sure the inlay does two things; that it seats properly flush with the surface of the wood (don’t count the veneer tape, which should be above the surface) and that the sides line up cleanly.  Remove any hairs or impediments to the inlay seating properly with your sharpened fine chisels.

Glue up!  Now would be a good time to cross your fingers and pray to an appropriate diety.    I fill the inlay, right to the edges, with an appropriate layer of Titebond 3.  Don’t overdo it on the glue, or soak it too hard.  Make sure the layer is thin, but covers the bottom of the inlaid surface.  Don’t put any on the veneer itself!   Position and tape the inlay into position.  Double check now for any protruding surfaces.  Once you clamp or bag it, the clamps or bag won’t “fix” overlapping veneer, they’ll just ensure it ends up glued tightly.  Then, bag it up and leave it overnight.   This is one time when you don’t want to count on a 2-4 hour glue set up time.  Leave it.  Trust me.

Once out of the bag, inspect for overlapping veneer.  Provided you don’t have any, its time to move on to removing the veneer tape.  I have a small spray bottle of distilled water.   Then i use a card scraper and start to work through the layers of veneer tape.  Since you have several layers, you’ll probably have to spritz a few times to get all of it.  Keep paper towels handy to wipe the veneer schmutz off your card scraper.

Take your time and let it dry thoroughly.  Again, no rushing here.    I left mine overnight in a warm part of the house to make sure the water wasn’t going to mess with the surface.    The next day, I hit the shop again, gave it a very light sanding, and a wipe down with mineral spirits to see how it came out.

Didn’t require any cleanup!  Ready to finish!

I wanted to make a pair of serving trays for my wife, although knowing her, she’ll want to give them away because she’s generous and loves to show off my work (often to my utter dismay, a lot of my work is highly flawed).  I went for a very simple design.  4 Sides, 2 handles, and a bottom floating panel of veneered plywood.  I figured I could handle the 4 dovetails per tray without too much error.

I went for the sides first.  I had some shorts of Padauk from Highland Hardwoods that I bought on a whim, and after a after some stock prep, I gave myself some delicate 5/8th thick material for the sides, nice and square.

While preparing the stock, I created some hardboard templates so that I can put curves into the work, and to make the manufacture of more trays (after she gives these away) much easier.

A forstner bit started the ends of the holes in the hardboard for the handles.

A rough cut and a cleanup on the router table finished the handle holes.

I laid out the slope on the tray handle ends, roughed it on the bandsaw, and smoothed it with rasp and sandpaper.

After resawing all the side stock, I knew I’d have to leave the shop for a few days, so I stickered the small stack and let my holddown keep it straight. It worked well.

Next week, joinery time!

I decided to dress up one of the serving trays I’m making with a compass rose inlay. I used the excellent instructions of Mike Henderson. I used Walnut and figured (birdseye) Anigre veneer, and I’ll be inlaying the rose into a curly maple raised panel.

I have most of the tools Mike mentioned, but I created some others, like a veneer cutting board, a cheap MDF 22.5 degree triangle.

I also created a ‘veneer jointer’ out of some sandpaper and plywood.

I cut the veneer 3×2 (one of them has some extra length) 8 pieces of each (2 roses). Then used my mdf triangle and the cutting board to produce my triangles. After cutting, I laid them out on some white paper so I could check for gaps and sand as necessary.

Then I taped up the triangles.

Then the whole kit.

Then I flipped it over and began on the veneer tape.

With the veneer tape dry, (it can take a while and a rush here is a bad idea.) I moved on to cutting the first triangles.

I got them all cut, jointed as necessary, and re-taped.

Then we flip it over. Starting to look quite like a compass rose now!

And veneer tape the heck out of it…

Then its back to the drying phase. Again, no rushing. Finally, its time to cut away the spare veneer to reveal the minor compass points. I went over this once lightly with a pencil, before I did any cutting, so I made sure I wasn’t cutting on the wrong point. It can be tricky and I came very close to accidentally chopping off a major point, so I think its worth taking the time to pre-mark these.

With everything cut, I began to peel back layers and trim the veneer tape off the excess veneer.

When done, you’re left with a compass rose! (Note there’s a tiny bit of veneer tape showing on the edges of some pieces. This will need to be carefully trimmed back before I try and inlay the piece into its final home.