PREPARING ROSETTE ELEMENTS

PART 3 - CENTRAL MOTIF ELEMENTS.

I started off by sticking a long strip of blue masking tape on the segments to align them. Then I added 6 perpendicular strips of tape that were to function as clamps, added glue sparingly and folded to miter together while wrapping the tape around the work. After about 15-20 minutes I unwrapped the tape and carefully cleaned up the glue with a chisel, and rewrapped one of them again.

The other was left unwrapped until the center rosewood strip of veneer was glued in place using a piece holly scrap wrapped in cellotape as a caul. Again, after 15 minutes, that segments was unwrapped and the glue was gleaned up around the rosewood veneer.

Then I set the taper jig to 3.5º and stuck each segment in and planed the horizontal walnut/maple/walnut part to size. The one with the rosewood veneer attached was planed flush, whereas the one without was left proud to accommodate for the strip, about 0.5mm. The two components were glued together using small spring clamps. The last two miters were glued on in a similar fashion, though this time the rosewood veneer were included in the gluing.

MITERS READY FOR GLUING

GLUING MITERS

CLEANING GLUE

GLUING ROSEWOOD CENTER VENEER

GLUING VERTICAL SEGMENTS

At this point I thought the whole thing had gone horribly wrong; That the final width of the log was too narrow, and the miters were cut wrong, and I reluctantly decided to start all over again. But, to satisfy my own curiosity I haphazardly planed the two protruding segments flush with the sides just to see how it would look like. BAD IDEA! In the process I ended up taking a bit of walnut veneer off the vertical segments as well.

While I was figuring out why the log had become too narrow I suddenly discovered that it really wasn't and it all boiled down to me measuring incorrectly. I despair! To rectify the hick-up, I figured out that I could glue on an additional piece of walnut veneer on one side of the log once it was finished and use that for compensation and to adjust the final width and taper if needed.

The triangular rosewood pieces were glued on the top and bottom using blue tape and rubber bands and planed flush with the sides freehand, first with a plane, then with a scraper until virtually flush and finally with a very finely set plane to carefully even out small irregularities. The walnut veneer was then added and the log was done.

FINISHED ROSETTE LOG

ROSETTE LOG CLOSE-UP

ROSETTE TILES