Walnut Bread Box with Marquetry #4: Cutting the bread and a little spontaneous saw repair

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Greetings all. I wanted to catch this project up to date. After the glue set on the marquetry, I need to clean up all that messy paper tape. Not to mention the fact that my shop-sawn veneers are never really exactly precisely the same thickness. Thus my difficulty with scraping the marquetry level. Little pieces invariably come up or chip in the process. So here’s what I do.

This is the picture once the clamps come off:

Not too much to look at yet. Then I’m back to my router with the nice and wide acrylic fence. Any straight bit will do here (I think I have the 5/8” in there.) I tape down some tracks for the router to run on and lower the bit till it’s just short of brushing the background wood. By the way, if you try this technique, just make sure the distance between your tracks isn’t wide enough to let the router fall in. Yep, learned that one the hard way on a different project …

Then I’m ready to move the router back and forth and cut off the part of the veneer that is proud of the surface, along with the glue and paper tape. As my 5-year-old son would say, “Easy-peesy, lemon-squeezy.”

Now a little quick work with the scraper and the picture is totally flattened and ready for the knife blade and rivet.

However, before I get to that point, I decide as I’m cutting my Walnut to length that it is high time to fine tune the Craftsman radial arm saw that I use for this purpose.

The thing has been wobbling for so long and I’m sick of putting it off. Needless to say, about 2 hours later, the saw is in pieces on my shop floor and I’m sweating. There doesn’t seem to be any adjustments to those pulleys that guide the saw along the arm. That’s when I pull out my trusty “persuader” (aka 2lb mini-sledge) and gently guide the track into a more amenable shape. Problem solved—no more wobble. Is there anything these mallets can’t accomplish?

Anyhow, I go ahead and cut out a place for the rivets and blades. Here’s a picture of the finished product with a little mineral oil on it:

I like it pretty much. I read somewhere that you can use the wood grain itself for shading and differentiating the pieces. This worked pretty well, although I do believe some shading would have made the piece pop. Oh well, live and learn. On to the case!

Source: LumberJocks.com

Walnut Bread Box with Marquetry #4: Cutting the bread and a little spontaneous saw repair