Intarsia Finished

Hi all,  In my last post I left you with a picture of the intarsia project that I was working on. Here it is again just to jog your memory.

At this stage it looked like a kid's jigsaw puzzle, but there was still a lot of work to be done. After cutting the pieces out they had to be shaped to give the fish a realistic look when it is glued together. The shaping was done using various bit of kit in my workshop. A disc and belt sander was used to make sure the back of the pieces were flat and the edges were rounded over with my oscillating drum sander. I also used a rotary tool in places where the drum sander wouldn't go and then stuck the fish together on a backer-board that was cut from a piece of 3mm ply.

The whole thing was then sanded by hand, down to 240 grit and then given three coats of gloss varnish. Finally, I put a hanger on the back and stuck it on the dining room wall for my wife's approval. Here it is complete with a pyrography eye that I forgot to mention.

My wife liked it and asked me to leave it exactly where I'd hung it, so I did and now it stares back at me every morning while I'm eating my toast.

So what are my views on intarsia?
Well,to be honest, they are mixed. I enjoyed shaping the wood and the end result is reasonable, however it is very time consuming. In other words, the amount of effort put in was beyond the amount of pleasure I derived from the finished product. Having said that, I learnt a few things while creating the fish and will use my newly gained knowledge on future project  even if they are not intarsia based.

If you fancy doing some intarsia, please have a go. I can recommend the book I used by Kathy Wise, it is informative and well written with clear photos of the processes involved.

For my next project, I will be doing a couple of commissions that came from my wife. I will show you them in my next post. I will have to ask you to be patient because time will be tight. I have just started decorating the living room and I promised a few people that my latest book, 'The Reluctant Pom' would be published buy the end of September. It looks like that might have to slip a few days; still, it's good to be busy.