Fancy Jewelry Box

'Before'

 I am sure this has to be one of the smallest pieces of furniture we have worked on.   It is a little jewelry box, designed to look like a chest of drawers.  Our client wanted to refinish the outside, while preserving the cloth covered inside.  We were able to do exactly that for her.  The inside was masked off and then we stripped the box by hand.

Hand stripping allowed us to get the outside very clean, while avoiding the masked off area.  This is  very sensitive work.  We then did our regular prep sanding.  At this point the client came in and chose her stain color and finish sheen.

'Stripped'

 The box was finished in a 'Pecan' stain.  This color really gave beautiful contrast between the wood and the veneer marquetry, and  allowed the veneer to look it's best.  Over the stain we applied a 'Satin' sheen finish.  Once these coats were dry, all the hardware was put back on and voila!  You can see the beautiful completed effect below.  Lovely right?

'All Done!'

The Many Challenges of Laying Veneer

 Veneer work takes a great amount of skill, even if you are just laying one piece.  But to successfully lay down 24 pieces?  That requires mastery!  And that is just what our 'veneer-man extraordinaire' did on this armoire side panel.   There are so many challenges with applying veneer to a surface, but when you do a job such as this one, with so many pieces of veneer, which all have to match perfectly, the challenges multiply quickly.

First off,  the base surface has to be perfectly smooth.  Any bumps or valleys will effect the way the veneer adheres and could create air bubbles.  Air bubbles are a big problem and lead to the veneer cracking and flaking off.


Next, when each piece of veneer is cut,  the cut has to be perfectly straight so that when you joint the pieces together, there are no gaps in the wood.  And, you have to make sure the the angles are the same so that the grain runs the same way and the seams between the pieces disappear.

Then, each piece of wood has to be aligned perfectly so that the center seam runs straight, all the way down the panel.  This requires lots of very careful measuring, marking, re-measuring, re-marking etc!

And finally, on this panel there is that gorgeous center diamond pattern.  For that you have to take all of the challenges I just told you about the other pieces, and multiply it!  That center diamond has to be cut perfectly, measured perfectly, aligned perfectly, glued perfectly, clamped perfectly.  If it is off, it will throw off the look of the entire panel.

The good thing is that we actually have craftsmen here at our shop who can do this picky, meticulous work, and do it well!  They are like woodworking superheroes.  They can make broken things 'unbroken', they can make ugly things beautiful, and they can perfectly align veneer!

Final Look at a Repaired Marquetry Table

 This table came to us some time ago in desperate need of some veneer expertise.  It is a 'home made' table, which makes the original work quite remarkable!  Unfortunately the glue just didn't stand the test of time, and there were pieces of veneer peeling up and breaking off all over the place.  We began our work by stripping the table, which revealed the true nature of how much work was needed.  You can see the work needed, in the top photo.  We were able  to salvage many of the pieces that had peeled or broken off, and re-glue them into place.  But for the rest of the damage, we had to try and find a matching veneer and make patches.  This turned out to be a true challenge.  Much of  the veneer on this table is rare or obscure, so that made it hard to find replacements.  In addition, when we did find the correct replacement veneer,  the older pieces had often darkened with age, so the patches were still visible.  The wood grain matched, but the depth of color did not.  This meant we had to use subtle dye techniques to bring the new wood to the same tone as the old.  We also had to employ some expert touchup techniques where the old veneer had tiny little chips, or the seams between veneers were no longer as crisp as they once were.

Once the tricky veneer work was completed, and all the necessary touchup and dye was done, we moved on to replacing the finish.  We applied a shellac as that was the original finish. To replicate the color we used 4 coats,  2 of orange shellac and 2 of super blonde shellac.  The table looks fantastic. The colors of the veneers are vibrant and have depth.  It is once again a masterpiece that can proudly grace the living room of the original maker's family and descendants.

To see more photos of the work on this table check out our Flickr Page here...   Dodecagon Marquetry Table

Fancy Marquetry Table gets a Touchup

 This home made marquetry table came to us because the veneer  on the top was damaged and peeling. We stripped the table and then went to work re-gluing the raised areas and cutting new pieces where the veneer had to be replaced all together.

All the veneer repairs have been completed, but there were still flaws in the marquetry all over the place and these had to be corrected with touchup.  Some of the flaws were simply because the wood was not the same age, and so hadn't darkened with time,  and some of them were from the original veneer that had tiny little breaks and nicks.
Our color wizard chose 3 different pigment powders from his collection to create this mustardy yellow.  He used White, Green, Canary Yellow and Pine.  This is the mixture for just one of the colors he had to use, each different wood type he touched up on this piece needed it's own special custom blend.

This table top uses many different kinds of woods including Birds Eye Maple, Rosewood, Lacewood, Elm and Ebony.  The colors he chose, along with his expert fine gran strokes, blended perfectly with each wood he was working on.  The table top looks beautiful and is ready for it's final step,  a coat of orange Shellac over the entire table.  

Peeling Veneer on Intricate Marquetry

 Boy do we have work to do on this table!   It holds the unique distinction of being a hand made table,  crafted by the brother of it's current owner.  The marquetry on the top is not an easy thing to do, by any means.   It is done with several different varieties of veneer intricately cut and put together in a star pattern.  Some of the veneer was flaking off when it was brought to us for repair and restoration.

Our task is to strip the old finish off,  do any repairs to the veneer needed, and then re-finish it.  We knew it was going to be a big project, but we didn't get to see just how big, until that old finish came off.

It has been put through our stripping tanks, and we now see the true state of the veneer marquetry. The veneer is peeling off badly all over the table.  Some of the veneer pieces are missing completely.  This means a lot of delicate glue work, and quite a bit of very careful, exacting  veneer cutting.  It is like trying to make a piece for a puzzle when one has been lost.  Can you imagine how hard that would be?  Fortunately, we have very skilled craftsmen here at our shop, but I do not envy them the job of fixing this table.  I will put more pictures up as the work progresses on this pice!  Do you have something with peeling veneer? Maybe a 30's era bedroom set, or a dining table that someone was not kind to?  Bring it to us, you will be amazed at what we can do!

The Case of the Woodgrain Illusion

I have an interesting tidbit for my readers today.  We have finished work on this beautiful Waterfall Bedroom Set.  The veneer is so intricately put together, we admire it every time we pass it here in the shop.  One interesting thing we have noticed as we pass the set, in that the wood seems to change depth and color as we go by.
If you look at this piece from the left you can see a checkerboard pattern of dark and light.  But then if you look at in from the right the pattern reverses.  If you look at the piece straight on there is no checkerboard pattern at all and the veneer looks even in depth.

This interesting phenomena is called 'Flashing'.  It is caused by the laying down of each piece of veneer in an alternating right-side-up and up-side-down pattern.  The grain then catches the light differently causing one part to look dark, and another to look light.  This can bee seen anytime the veneer is applied with the grain alternating, as can be seen  below.

I think this is pretty neat,  do you?

Waterfall style 30's Bedroom Set

This chest of drawers is part of a large bedroom set including a vanity, night stand, vanity chair, etc.  It came in with this dated white 'antiqued'  paint all over the set.  I guess the paint gives it a sort of cute country charm.  But that is not quite what the current owner wanted.  They brought it to us to have a complete 'makeover'.





The makeover began by stripping all that paint off.  Paint is not easy to remove, but had the owner tried it themselves, they would have had a horribly difficult task on their hands.  Fortunately, we have a very good, immersion stripping system here and that paint practically melted off.  Boy were we all in for a surprise when we found what was hiding under that paint!

 The veneer work on this set is beautiful!  I can hardly imagine what the decision process was to cover it with paint! This 30's era 'Waterfall' bedroom set displays beautiful, intricate veneer marquetry not seen in furniture with a more recent date. But it also is just a bit more intricate then other pieces of the same period.  The set has been sanded at this point and is ready for finishing.

The customer has decided on a 'natural' stain, which is an excellent choice to bring out the different colors of the varying kinds of wood used.  The natural stain has been applied in this picture, and already the side panels have a deeper color than the decorative edges.  Once we put the Finish Coat on, the differing kinds of wood grain be even more enhanced, and this bedroom set will be worthy of quite a lot of admiration.

Masterful Veneer Work & Painting Skills

 I recently spent some time learning  how to cut and apply veneer for a small table I have been restoring as a personal project.  I thought by doing the work myself, I would gain a better grasp of what the craftsmen actually do, here at the shop.  And boy have I been surprised,  each skill I have learned for the sake of my table has been much more challenging then I expected, and given me a much greater appreciation of the skills the craftsmen here have.  So when I saw the work one of them did on the edges of this small table, I was amazed.

All four sides to the table have these very small pieces of veneer, cut at alternating angles, and fit closely together.  There were multiple pieces that had chipped or come off all together.  We recently brought on a new Craftsman and he certainly proved himself with this project.  Can you see in the above picture the little pieces he cut and glued in place?  Those cuts are perfect and the pieces could not fit into their places any better.

After the veneer was attached he evened out the original Shellac coating, so that it spread over the entire side, including the new pieces of veneer.  Shellac and Nitrocellulose Laquer are the only two kinds of finish that you can re-liquify and spread out in this manner.  Had this table had any other kind of finish, we would have had to apply an all new coat.

The table base was then glued back together.  Because wood naturally shrinks with time and a dry climate, there was some gapping in the seams where the sides joined with the legs.  These seams were filled with a very hard epoxy putty.  Of course, epoxy putty is lighter then the wood on this table, and has no grain lines.  So our Master Craftsman stepped in at this point to complete the job.

Our Master Craftsman is a touchup wizard.  He can create a wood grain on just about anything.  Using 7 different colors of shellac (Pine, Cherry, Medium Maple, Universal Walnut, Burnt Sienna, Extra Dark Walnut and Canary Yellow) he is painting on wood grain over the putty areas, making cracks where the wood was broken and glued disappear, and adding highlighting to the new veneer where the grain was not as dramatic as the old.  With skills like this, maybe he should hang his work in a gallery!