Saturday, February 25, 2012

INTARSIA - FALL WELCOME SWAG




I've wanted to do an Intarsia project for some time but all of the ones I've seen so far are either too difficult or too basic looking.   I spotted this in a woodworking magazine and loved it. The article included a separate template for all the pieces and it was just a matter of choosing the right wood for each of the different components. I chose Sugar Maple, Redwood, Bloodwood, and Burled Maple for the leaves, White Oak and Poplar for the pumpkins, and Cherry and Black Walnut for the acorns. 
Before I got started I copied the templates from the magazine so I could keep the originals to reproduce this project in the future. It took some time to match up the template pieces with the different pieces of wood, taking care to orient the grain to simulate things like the veins in the leaves and the pumpkin stems.  I used a spray adhesive to glue the template copies to the different pieces of wood, then cut them out using both the band saw and scroll saw.
 
After what seemed like days of sanding to contour all the components and fine tune the fit, I adhered everything to a piece of 1/4" plywood with yellow glue.  This project, like most, took longer than expected, but exceeded all of my expectations. This was my first experience using Bloodwood and I was very impressed with how it machines and the pleasant smell it gives off when sanding it.   

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