How to Make a Marquetry Book Cover

In this post, I am going to show the process of making marquetry by guiding through the steps I made to create this book. The project is special in that it pushing the boundaries of woodworking by making a detour on the area of bookbinding and using wooden mosaic of wildflowers for the wooden cover. This gave me some challenges that I will cover later in this article. In the followings, first I will describe how the original idea formulated through the first concepts, selecting and preparing veneers and drawing the outlines of the decoration. Then I will show how I cut the veneers and built up the marquetry, presenting two useful techniques (namely shading veneers and fine lining) and how I apply them. I will continue with the finishing of the cover by refitting the tape, pressing the cover and applying oil and wax on it. Finally comes the assembly of the book itself.

Planning and veneer selection

The first vague idea of the project portrayed an elegant book with a highly textured wooden cover reminding of classic leather bound books. At a closer look, that would reveal interesting grain patterns showing the true beauty of the wood. For the decoration of the book, I depicted a circle of wildflowers with a monogram in the center, that I planned to cut as a wooden mosaic  or another name, marquetry. Marquetry made from wood veneers that are thin slices of wood cut from wood blanks or peeled from tree trunks. They come in various thickness up to 3 mm/0.12 inch, however, for this detailed work thinner sheets are easier to work with (here all veneers are just 0.6 mm/0.023 inch thick).

For the base , I selected consecutive walnut root veneers that are cut from the same block, having almost identical grain patterns. That created uniform lookout on every side of the cover, imitating that the cover was made from solid wood boards. For this project, a fairly dark walnut veneer-set was chosen, with a dominant grain direction on one of its side. This side went next to the spine of the book to indicate the page-turn direction of the book.

For the flowers, I searched mostly for burly, knotted, wavy and birds eye veneer sheets. These veneers provide enough texture for creating more realistic effect since in nature plain texture is fairly rare. Eventually, I selected wavy sapelli mahogany, poplar and elm root, vavona burl, padouk, etc. I cut the leaves from the green parts of rainbow poplar wood veneer sheets, but yellow, red or even brown colors are also perfect for this, if we want to have autumn colors for the circle.

Fixing Veneers

It is a good habit to tape the back of the veneer before starting any work on that. This is especially true in the case of root veneers, since it is more likely that small particles can fall out during cutting those tangled grains. For fixing, veneer tape serves us well, that is a thin paper covered with adhesive. The tape also useful when it comes to refill already missing parts of the sheet, supporting the filling till it sets,  After finishing up cutting, this tape can be scraped or sanded off.

Drawing the flower circle

As regards pre-drawing our picture before cutting, we have two main different approaches to choose from. We can draw detailed drafts that indicate the cutting lines, marking the enclosed panels with colors and veneer types. This preparation quicken the cutting itself, and combining with any visualization form, like graphics software, the end result can be illustrated in advance. Applying the other method, we can let the wood grains and colors direct the knife, shaping the original pictures according the natural forms of the veneer. As a general rule, cutting along the wood patterns makes the picture more natural looking and emphasize the unique wood patterns more. This step-by-step building process also helpful when it comes to “blending” the borders of different wood veneers with combining colors and grain patterns.
Usually, the preferred technique is a mix of the two, just like in the case of this cover where only few main lines and leaves were marked. During the cutting process, the additional elements were added to keep the balance of the color and mass.

Cutting

One of the most basic cutting method of making marquetry is the window method. This follows a few step long iterating process. After drawing the pattern, the first step is cutting out the panel from the base veneer. It can be done using knife or scroll-saw. In general, the knife is better for straight lines, while the saw comes handy for cutting curved lines. Working with the saw alter in that the inlay is cut along with the base, providing a perfect fit (in case of double bevel technique). In the same time, cutting with knife has an additional step, that is marking the veneer used for inlay with the knife (not cutting through first). After cutting the inlay, that can be fit into the base and fixed it with veneer tape on the back of the base veneer. This process repeats itself till the last panel finds its place on the picture.

Cutting the flower stems – the technique of fine lining

Building up the marquetry picture started with cutting the stems that set the circle and served as the background for leaves and flowers. For this, the scroll saw’s smallest spiral blade just provided the right width. The procedure then was simple: making a small hole with an awl, passing through the blade and cutting along the line. If we want to avoid small particles falling out, we can use transparent tape on the top of the veneer (on the side where the drawings are).

Then the insert was cut by a knife carefully matching the width of the blade size.

Finally, the fine lines are pressed into the incision and fixed with wood glue and tape.

Shading

Details are crucial for increasing natural and realistic lookout of the picture. One method of detailing in marquetry is shading that brings lights and three-dimensional shapes into consideration. In marquetry making, we have three options for shading: exploiting the color differences of the given veneer panel, or using another, darker veneer for shades (or lighter ones for indicating lights), or applying the “sanding” technique that is burning the wood for darkening.

In general, the first options gives the most natural lookout, since we use the darker parts of the very same veneer for shading. At the same time, it is limited to the grain’s color differences, that is often insufficient for the desired effect. Using another, darker veneer from a different sheet can be a solution, but sometimes it is challenging to find a good fit that close enough to the original one in terms of color and texture. On the top of that, transition from lighter to darker areas is usually too harsh in that case, creating apparent borders between the panels. If the two former solutions are not satisfactory, then we can still try to heat the veneer for darkening the color. We can use hot sand or soldering torch for heating. Usually, lighter color veneers react better to this method, offering larger scale of dark colors depending on the heating time and temperature.

Shading adds an extra step to the regular routine of cutting, that is darkening areas of the inlay after (or before depending on preference) cutting it into the desired shape. Since burning reduces the size of the inlay, we can dampen the effected area a bit to add back some moisture to the wood before fitting it into its place. The is shown on the following picture:

Reapplying the veneer tape

Before pressing the marquetry picture, ensuring even pressing power on the whole surface is essential. Since veneer tape can be built up during the cutting process after fitting pieces close to or “on the top of” each other, it is a good habit to rub off the tape and to reapply only one layer of tape.

For fixing and holding the panels together during rubbing the veneer tape, I use masking tape on the other side of the picture:

After this, I can safely rub off the multiple layers of the veneer tape with the spine of my knife (scraper would be more effective, certainly). Dampening the tape helps a lot in this:

Finally, I can reapply the veneer tape and carefully pull of the masking tape from the other side:

The finished picture

After all these preparation, we arrive at the finishing up the picture. In this step, I carefully investigate the picture searching for small gaps between panels and if I find one I fill it with the appropriate veneer. These gaps can be easily found holding the picture towards any light: the gaps will gleam as the light comes through them. If we are satisfied with the results, we are ready for pressing the picture.

Pressing

For increasing their durability, marquetry pictures are needed to be pressed to a wooden board . In this case, I pressed the picture onto a board of homemade plywood containing one 1.5 mm thick mahogany and two 0.6 mm thick American walnut veneer sheets. I decided to use this plywood to minimize deflation of the cover that comes with veneering. Plywood builds up from sheets with rotated grain direction that extinguish the wood movement of the particles very well.

For gluing the marquetry picture onto the board, I use PVA wood glue. There are many different glues to choose from based on personal preference. The only thing that we need to keep in mind is to reduce the glue’s moisture content by let it set a bit on the board before pressing the veneers. Every glue has an indicated open time till you have to bond the pieces together. Till that time, we can let the glue set to minimize the moisture that the veneer absorb to avoid blistering.

After the glue set for a while, we can press the marquetry on the glued board (always glue the board, not the veneer). For small pieces, clamps are satisfactory for pressing the veneer onto the base. We should start with increasing the pressing power from the middle of the picture to press unnecessary glue to the sides. Then we can apply pressing power moving from the middle to the sides.

For satisfactory results, we must let the pieces pressed at least till it is indicated on the glue description. After that we can scrape off the tape and sand the picture.

Scraping off veneer tape and Sanding

This is one of the most awaited moment of making marquetry when the picture reveals while we are removing the veneer tape and sanding the surface. Removing the veneer tape follows the same procedure as we discussed earlier. We can use scraper and some water for moistening the tape and peeling it off from the board. Sanding usually start with 80 or 100 grit sizes paper and continues to fine paper with 320 or 400 grit sizes. The paramount importance is to avoid sending off the very thin layer of marquetry. This can happen with softwood or on uneven surfaces even more frequently, so finishing up sanding by hand might help control removing to much wood from the top veneer.

Applying oil and wax finish

As a final step of finishing the cover, I applied three coats of oil and one layer wax finish on the top of it.

Assembly of the book

I bound together some paper sheets to build up the main block of the book. If you are interested in how to stitch the sheets together, you can find many reference.

Next step was to add the linen and endpaper to the block, while a canvas used originally for painting was used to hold together the covers and spine. PVA glue was used to glue the parts together.

Finally, I had the finished book at my hand.

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