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Inspired by Haans' recent posts and the great purfling he had made for some of his recent builds I dug out the veneer stack and glued up some purfling logs for upcoming and current builds.





A Koa/Spruce classical that is currently on the bench seemed like a good candidate for a radial segmented rosette which also employed some of the new purfling.

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Peter

Spectacular and inspiring indeed! I must try that!!

Thanks for posting, Peter.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Nice Peter. The end result looks great. I've been wanting to make a back strip for a parlour I'm doing and didn't quite know where to start. I do now. Thanks.

Danny

NICE !
Great design !
How many hours do you think you have into these purfs?

Mike

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Mike Collins

Mike, Each log takes about 4 to 6 hrs. actual hands-on time. This does not include the glue drying time between each step. It is a lengthy process but fun to experiment with various designs and patterns.

I usually start with veneers at 2" wide x 32" long and try to glue 3 to 4 layers maximum at a time until I reach my design stack required thickness. Any more than that and you are dealing with too much hydrostatic pressure between the multiple layers to do a good job of alignment and adhesion. After I have built the stack to my planned quantity of layers I clean up the sides and get them flush with a block plane or on the router table using it as a jointer to get the sides true. Then it goes to the bandsaw where I try and get at least 3 longitudinal pieces at least 5/8" wide. Then the two or three lengths get stacked vertically and glued again. If you want to make diagonal patterns such as I show here you then have to run them through the saw as you see in the first photo and stack and glue again as shown in the third photo.

The last step is to cut to desired width and thickness and then clean-up the edges. This can take quite a bit of time depending on just how clean a cut you can get. I can see why Haans was so enthusiastic about the Proxxon saw and the nice clean cuts he was getting out of it. I'm sure that it has saved him a lot of time. Since I don't have one I use a small sanding block with some 320 paper and a gentle, delicate hand to clean off the saw feathers.

I leave the log intact until I really need to cut some stock. It saves damaging a bunch of very small purfs.

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Peter

That rosette looks good, Peter. I have been working with veneers a lot lately too. I love the look of the finished "rope" edge treatment.

Max

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Max Bishop
Brighton, Michigan

Very nice Peter! I glue up veneer in 16" strips so i can cut with a paper cutter which does a nice job without the saw marks. I saves me alot of time. Here's one of mine with walnut/maple/walnut perf.

Peter;
In the close-up pic I noticed that on one side there is a black line against the center motif;but none on the other side purf.
They look opposite of each other.


Is this intentional?

Mike

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Mike Collins

Yep, yeah... sure.... it is now...

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Peter

I thought so !
This is after all- ART !!
MC

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Mike Collins