I learned to cut marquetry on the
chevalet de marqueterie (the chevalet, for short) using either the Boulle
method (packet cutting) or the piece by piece method. I was quite fortunate to learn this from
Patrick Edwards and Patrice Lejeune at American School of French Marquetry.
After cutting out all the marquetry
pieces in either of these methods, you end up with a bunch of pieces that need
to be assembled into the final picture; sometimes, it’s a pretty intense jigsaw
puzzle. See Figure 1; this is a fairly
simple one.
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| Figure 1 |
The method of assembling the
marquetry picture that the French developed centuries ago involves building the
picture face down on paper stretched tight over a board. The French call it cale tendue. For simplicity
in the English language, we’ll use the name “assembly board” as Patrick Edwards
adopted.
An assembly board is simply paper
stretched tight over a board, much like an artist’s canvas. I’ll explain how this is done later in the
article. Hot hide glue is spread on the
paper (Figure 2), and the pieces of the picture are placed face down in the
glue.
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| Figure 2 |
At this point, the face of each
piece is on a single plane with the paper.
At this stage, I press the picture for a couple hours to make sure
everything bonds well and stays flat. Once
the glue dries, the back of the veneer is facing up (Figure 3).
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| Figure 3 |
The back of the picture can be sanded to even
out any thickness discrepancies. Mastic
(glue and sawdust; I use hot hide glue) can then be applied to the back
of the picture to fill any gaps (Figure 4).
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| Figure 4 |
After the mastic hardens, the back of the picture can be sanded again to
get rid of high spots. And if hide glue
is being used for the mastic and for mounting to the final substrate, doing a
perfect clean up job is not necessary.
Hide glue will bind to hide glue.
Just one of the many wonderful aspects of hide glue.
The final picture is cut away from
the assembly board and is ready to mount, store or send to someone else for use
(Figure 5).
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| Figure 5 |
If you’re going to store it
for any length of time, I recommend sandwiching it between a couple of boards
to prevent warping. To mount the
picture, glue it to the substrate with the kraft paper facing up; the face
under the kraft paper is the show face.
Once the glue dries, the kraft paper is wetted with cold water; the
paper absorbs the water and is easily scraped away. The hide glue underneath is also scraped away
(the same cold water softens the hide glue on the face) and the final surface
of the picture shows through. Since the
back of the marquetry was flattened and the front of the marquetry was already
in the same plane and flat, there is precious little that needs to be done once
the picture is mounted.
One advantage of this method is that
the face surface is flat. The
alternative is layers and layers of tape, which results in high spots on the
face. When the picture is pressed onto
the substrate, these high spots must be compensated for or bubbles are likely
in the final piece. Another advantage of
the assembly board is that it is easy to flatten the back and apply
mastic.
To make an assembly board, you need
a few things: a board larger than your picture, hot hide glue, European kraft
paper, water, and some veneer tape.
I suspect that the veneer tape is
not entirely necessary, but it’s how I learned and is probably cheap
insurance.
I’ve never tried making an assembly
board with anything other than hot hide glue, but I suspect it wouldn’t work as
well. The advantage of the hot hide glue
is that it gets a fast tack and grabs before the paper begins to dry (you’ll
see this in a minute). I’m not sure
other glues would work, but maybe that’s an experiment worth performing.
I have tried using paper other than the European kraft paper. It just doesn’t work. The European kraft paper is shiny on one side
and dull on the other. The shiny side is
somewhat moisture resistant. This is
critical in making the assembly board, since we are going to wet the shiny
side. This is also the side that the
marquetry will be glued to in the end.
To start with, cut some kraft paper
so it is more than twice as big as the board (Figure 6). The kraft paper is going to wrap around the
board like wrapping a present. Cut it
big; you will trim it and throw away the waste.
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| Figure 6 |
Lay the kraft paper shiny side up.
Now wet the shiny side with a sponge (Figure 7). It should be pretty wet.
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| Figure 7 |
Turn the paper over so the shiny, wet side is
down and the dry, dull side is up. Keep
the dull side dry. Now wait. Waiting is the hard part. While you are waiting, the paper is absorbing
a bit of the water and expanding. When
the paper starts to wrinkle, spread out the wrinkles and move on to the next
step. Grab your board with one hand,
hold it over the glue pot, and spread hot hide glue on 3 edges (Figures 8, 9,
and 10).
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| Figure 8 |
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| Figure 9 |
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| Figure 10 |
The edge you are holding will
be the hinge side of the paper and will get glued later. Put the board flat on the paper and fold up
the paper tight over the 3 glued edges (Figures 11 and 12).
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| Figure 11 |
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| Figure 12 |
Take a razor blade and slice off the paper
about halfway down the thickness of the board (Figure 13).
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| Figure 13 |
Now spread glue on the hinge edge of the
board (Figure 14 – you may notice that in the pictures I put glue on this edge
prior to slicing off as shown in Figure 13 – woops! But it worked out.).
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| Figure 14 |
Grab the far side of the paper, pull it up
tight on the hinge side, and fold it over to the far side (Figure 15).
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| Figure 15 |
Stick the paper to the other 3 edges (Figures
16 and 17).
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| Figure 16 |
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| Figure 17 |
Since you sliced away the
paper from the first fold about halfway down the thickness of the board, you
have some exposed glue to adhere to.
Again, slice away the excess paper (about halfway down the thickness of
the board) and discard the excess (Figures 18 and 19).
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| Figure 18 |
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| Figure 19 |
Put veneer tape over the 3 edges that were
trimmed (this is cheap insurance to make sure the edges don’t lift off for some
reason…Figure 20). Now put the board in
a nice spot to dry.
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| Figure 20 |
The glue will grab the paper on all
4 edges. As the paper dries, it will
contract and pull tight across the surface of the board. Since it is only glued at the edges of the
board, once your marquetry is glued to the paper, it can easily be sliced away
as described earlier.
