Month: June 2013

Marquetry boxes by Patrice LeJeune and Patrick Edwards

Post author By Gary
Post date June 15, 2013
No Comments on Marquetry boxes by Patrice LeJeune and Patrick Edwards

If you like traditional marquetry, you will enjoy this post over on Lumberjocks, from Patrice LeJeune about his collaboration with Patrick Edwards on a series of four marquetry boxes. The blog post covers the classic methods used by Patrice, which are very interesting. It also shows the subtle variations in design for each of the four boxes. The marquetry is little short of stunning and, of course, the boxes themselves (made by Patrick and featuring full-blind dovetails on the corners), are perfectly made.

It’s very exciting to see that top quality work such as this is still admired and people are happy to pay for the craftsmanship and artistry that goes into each piece.

Tags Marquetry

Carving Chisels Marples & Sons

My birthday present to myself

Post author By Gary
Post date June 10, 2013
1 Comment on My birthday present to myself

I’m forty-five tomorrow. Blimey. I softened the pain and bought myself a birthday present. I’ve been looking for a nice set of carving chisels for a while. When I saw these come up on Gary’s superb OldSchoolTools website, I snapped them up.
A beautiful 8-piece Marples set with London Pattern octagonal boxwood handles.

Practical techniques

A quick box project

On the Hackney Tools site, I don’t go in for practical woodworking techniques and demonstrations, as there are so many people out there doing an amazing job already. However, I found this little box project over on a great blog, Giant Cypress, and I thought it was such a simple, yet useful design, it was worth mentioning. The site’s owner is Wilbur Pan, who lives in New Jersey and the site is well worth a visit. I’ve taken the main elements of Wilbur’s design and in an hour or two yesterday, with some scrap pine from the loft, I had a great box for some moulding planes I need to store.

Wilbur’s box has a very Japanese design, with a sliding lid. I actually couldn’t use the lid design, because the end pieces would catch a couple of the planes when withdrawing them. However, I’ll add another type of lid later. Main thing is, the planes are now in their own home, and I’ve inserted a partition, to hold them from moving around. The box will be for storage now, until I find a workshop space. Then I’ll simply put it on a shelf and it will work as a holding rack.

This box isn’t particularly pretty, but it’s so simple and you can adapt the design to your own needs. Nice one, Wilbur.