Creating a Compass Rose
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.
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