Patrice Lejeune

Treasure Boxes I, II and III.

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 23:17:00 +0000

Here is our latest video on our Treasure Box series project.

Thanks for watching

#marquetry #inlay #chevalet # veneer

Antique Refinishers, Inc, The Treasure boxes

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Sat, 08 Dec 2018 18:55:00 +0000

A video from the San Diego Woodworking Association, on our Treasure Boxes

Treasure Box III - Post #5: Chêne de Tronçais - Tronçais' Oa

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Sun, 02 Dec 2018 22:30:00 +0000

I have been working more on the Treasure Boxes than on the blog…

I could cut down the blog and fast forward to now, closer to the end, but I understand some of you like the step by step appoach.

One of the reason I have not been updating our progress as much as usual, and I am usually not great at it anyway, is that the first box was ordered 11 months ago, on drawing alone. It was bought by the wife of one of our best client for a big birthday, one with a brand new zero in it. The down side was that we had only 9 months to bring one of the 4 boxes to a presentation stage for the big date.

It is a small series so we worked on the 4 of them as much as possible and focused on the first one in the last couple months to bring it to presentation. We usually take 2 years to complete a series of 4 boxes, with all the other work and the fact that this box is the most comlplicated one we made so far, iit has been quite a challenging and very busy year.

One way we saved on time was with the carcass. On the previous 2 boxes we used european beech, one of the best wood we have access to, here, in San Diego, but we wanted to upgrade for something special and as Patrick was really busy working on a 14 foot dining room table, we contacted our friend Florian Bourgine in France.

He proposed to use Tronçais oak for the carcasse, a great white oak to work with.

Tronçais is a forest in Allier, France, that has had areas protected since the 17th century. A lot of the French oak forest where created by Colbert in 1670 when he bacame minister to Louis the XIVth. He ordered 2,5 million acres to be planted in order to become the first naval country and avoid the prediction of shortage of old growth tall oak for boat building by the year 2000. Talk about long term politics.
Today, in Tronçais, there is still a protected area of about 9000 acres with some trees closing to 500 years old.

Florian Bourgine had easy access to that great wood and I knew his quality as a woodworker, so we asked him to help us, in our need of hurry and quality in equal measure, by cutting and preparing as much as possible of the wood before hand.

Dimensions and type of joinery wanted.

(photos by Florian Bourgine)

Ready to ship.

While in the meantime I was working on the marquetry panels.

-- Patrice lejeune

Treasure Box III - Post #4: Cutting Marquetry

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Sun, 02 Dec 2018 22:12:00 +0000

So with a bit of tardiness here is an “account” on cutting the marquetry panels our Treasure Box III

As you know, I now do my marquetry in LA with a reduced but sweet set up.

On a piece by piece project the drawing is paramount to the final quality of your marquetry. No change can be made afterwards so I usually work my drawing until Patrick and Kristen pry me away from it.

Once this first stage is complete. We usualy have a good idea of what wood will be used where but there is always a bit of change and it is fixed at that moment. Each number correspond to a wood. We currently have a palette of more than 50 different woods and colors in sawn veneer.

There is always a possibility of change by re-cutting the pieces if you are not happy with the colors, but it is a waste of wood and time.

The pieces are cut on paper first and placed in an exploded view

I leave enough space around the papers for easy handling

On projects with a lot of pieces I cut one side at a time.
Here is the tray for one of the sides

Each piece is transfered in a numbered square following the guide.

Then the pieces of paper are glued to the corresponding veneer packet. Each of our pack are 4 layer thick, so we will end up with 4 boxes.

The pieces are cut on the chevalet.

Ans are laid on a tray

Some of them are really small

Some are pretty intricate

Some need a particular attention to accuracy so they nest nicely into each other

The process is repeated for each panel.

The trays fill up

At this point I check the pieces that I marked as possilby not good enough while cutting and decide which needs to be recut.

Once all the pieces are cut and approved, it is time for sand shading.

I have been using gas and actually found it better than electric plate.

On traditional marquetry, I like to give to each piece a bit of shading. It gives volume.

Once all the shading is done it is time to cut the backgrounds, one at a time.

The picture is build face down on paper Using hot hide glue

For those backgrounds, there is a lot of “islands” isolated between pieces. We use bridges to keep them pefectly located.

Those bridges are removed as we go.

Here are, prior to mastic, the 2 sides

The front

And the top

Here we go for the marquetry!

-- Patrice lejeune

Treasure Box III - Post #3: New Marquetry Workshop

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Sun, 02 Dec 2018 21:54:00 +0000

One of the reason it has been difficult to keep this blog updated is that my life has slightly changed in the past months.

My wife is now manager of a 19th century french painting gallery in LA.
For years she has been living between LA and San Diego for her research and work, we have to switch and I am now the traveling spouse.

For this reason one part of the workshop that I can easily bring with me is the marquetry workshop. I had my chevalet in my first apartment living room in France, it is the case again.

We have been lucky to find a small guest house with a large enough living space so that I can use a corner of it without any problem , and the light is great. I can also do my shading outdoor which is a great option, as per usual, I ended up doing the shading during a heatwave.

So I can now draw in LA, do my prep work in San Diego, assemble packs etc

I have got a nice light to cut and a good coffee machine.

Shade and assemble in LA also

Then the marquetry can be brought glued on paper just kept under clamp to San Diego, where Gigi can take possession of them for quality control.

So overall it works!

Treasure Box III - Post #2: Inspirati

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 22:58:00 +0000

I have been pretty busy working without much time for updating my blog.

Like many cabinet maker I have a special love affair with a particular piece of furniture. Couple of pieces in fact, but one of them is a coffer attributed to Andre-Charles Boulle at the J.P. Getty museum.

I always wanted to do a copy of it, I still will but we decided that our Treasure Box III was going to be inspired by it.

The original coffer is a “simple” box with a lid, but as we like, in our treasure box series, to add a little bit of details and functionality, we have decided, to add a drop front and a series of drawers and or a till.

Our treasure box is smaller than the original. We could have kept the original marquetry, but aesthetically we believed it was better to create something more in tune to our proportion.

We kept most of the layout and the flow of the scrolls, but made plenty of changes.

First, our lock is in the lid freeing the front marquetry panel for a little more “filling” in the marquetry-wise.
The negative space in the front were probably left to accommodate a key plate and probably 2 decorative side hooks, typical on this boxes. You can still see the holes on the front of the lid were the hook catches would have been.
We also changed the bird to have one looking at us, to involve the viewer in the scenes.
The flow of the branches, the flowers, all have been redesigned to create a all new composition but keeping roughly the original layout.
On all the panels we also put more emphasis on the negative space surrounding the central bird, which is a bit lost in the original front but was very present on the sides and particularly the top.

We also changed the lid front banding with a coin design to tie more with our clover as a key plate.

On the sides, one thing I was not found of in the original was the rubans and decided to live without. So, on top of the change in proportion, removing a big element like that create a change in the flow and layout that you basically have to redesign it.
We also favored having the birds face forward, once again insisting on a negative space around the birds in the center.

The top got also a little re-treatment, not as much as front and sides but the scrolls have been a bit reworked and flowers I have drawn are placed to match the flowers the closest on the sides and front to tie everything together.
As I do my final drawings as vector lines on the computer, one thing I like to do is to check on my negative space before I go print by filling the background and check the effect. In those type of design I believe that negative space are as important if not more than your actual pieces. You can also see better the effect I was looking for by surrounding the birds with a “wreath” of negative space, installing a central composition into the overall composition. We decided to make it even more flagrant on the top for a even more dramatic effect.

This project is actually well advanced, those who follow our work on Facebook or Instagram know, but I lacked time to write and post more than random pictures. So I will try to catch up and finish this story before the boxes are finished!!!

-- Patrice Lejeune

Treasure Box III - Post #1: Remember the Treasure Boxes series?

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 21:10:00 +0000

Remember TB I & TB II ?

Here is TB III

Well. As you can see it is not quite finished yet. But we have been really busy at the shop working on other project that I did not even take the time to post… But here we are, back on track.

Drawing is almost done, the 2 sides are finished and ready to be cut, top and front need to be verified and the back needs a bit more massaging, but it’s there.

We have taken this opportunity to clean up the veneer cellar with the “Tree Hugger”

We also have been cutting more of our own veneer, perfect sizes for piece by piece packets.

This has extended our palette quite a bit.

Our number of sawn veneer woods in marquetry pack is now in the 50’s for TB3. I am not sure we will use all of them in the project but they are packed and ready to go!

Drawing of one of the sides

All the paper cut for that side also

And the packs ready to be cut!

And why not a little extra

More soon!!!

Thanks for following

Deco Cabinet

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 22:42:00 +0000

Couple months ago, we were contacted by a designer in LA to create a deco cabinet inspired by an elevator door in LA.

At first we worked on a trompe-l'oeil concept

Then with the deigner, we upgraded to real volume pilaster with brass rods

Patrick had bought a beautiful american walnut board in the 70's and it was the perfect piece in color and width for this project. It was big enough to make a solid top, solid edges for the doors shelves etc and saw the rest into veneer for the front and sides. Other materials would include spanilla, boxwood, ferréol and ebony sawn veneer, as well as pewter and brass sheet.

I sparyed some alcohol on the veneer to mimic the color of finish

Brass and pewter

Usually we build our furniture out of solid wood but in this case the cabinet was made with high quality birch plywood.

The marquetry elements were cut

The added challenge was that the metal needed to match the patina of other brass elements in the room. to avoid having chemical on the wood we decided to have the elements prefenished and install them later after the sanding. As I cut the elements in supperposition "Boulle" style, I had left over elements that we mounted in the marquetry and kept the final elements that recieved the patina aside.

Then the front marquetry was assembled keeping the walnut background grain flowing throught the all piece, including the kickplate.

The doors and the pilaster were veneered. For the pilaster we used ferréol a dark chocolate color wood on the front and totally black ebony for the side to create more volume.

Then the doors were sanded up to the metal

As we used liquid hide glue, Old Brown Glue, we used the reversibility of the glue to remove the dummy metal elements using heat and moisture. As the glue was still fresh we had only to use heat.

Once the elements removed

The cavity were cleaned

The finished elements could be inserted and glued with fish glue. Fish glue is the best adhesive for glueing metal on wood.

At this point I could not resist to spray some alcohol to have an idea of the overall effect.

The cabinet is glued and the door adjusted

The pilaster glued to the door and the kickplate veneer to fit perfectly the grain of the doors

The top is adjusted to fit the cabinet

The lower pilaster is then glued on the kickplate with liquid hide glue, Old Borwn Glue.

The brass rod can now be fitted in the fluting. We have installed some pegs in them that will be used to glue them to the pliasters.

Now, it is ready to be finished and delivered.

French Polish Article

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 18:10:00 +0000

During the past months I have been working with Luke Addington on a 2 part article on French Polish for the UK magazine "Furniture & Cabinetmaking".

The first part will come out in the July issue.

We have put a lot of efforts to decribe not only the technical aspect but also the sensations and feelings that comes with french polishing.

Boulle Clock Restoration

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 20:26:00 +0000

18 months ago we started to work on a Boulle clock restoration for a gentleman back east.

We received the clock piece by piece, starting with the top to show the process and what we could do to our client.

First thing was bronzes removal

The lose brass elements where lifted and then, the fish glue in the cavities was rehydrated and removed, and the back of the brass elements were scraped clean.

Missing pieces are drawned by rubbing on a termal fax paper

The missing elements are cut on brass or on pre CITES black backed tortoise shell.

Other pieces are cut

And glued down using sand bags

The cleaning is done with “eau japonaise. I do not like to use it when there is wood elements on the Boulle marquetry, as the acidic content may be to agressive and damage the wood, but in this case it is perfectly fine.

I also discovered the shell was engraved, something I have rarely seen

When eveything was restored, I used suit black to fill the brass engraving

Then the shell was re-engraved, the cavity filled with gold dust and french polished. It can be sometime tricky to french polish on brass ans the difference in temperature can bring condensation and give a milky consistence to the shellac.

The bronzes were cleaned and installed

Our client being happy with the first part, sent us the rest fairly soon after and I started working on those. The based was the first to arrive. It was the most damaged part of the clock and also the hardest to restore considering the curviness of the sides.

But also because of a lot of missing elements and details on a very tight radius part

Like for the other part, I started by removal of the bronzes, lifting of the lose brass elements and cleaning of the cavities and the back of the brass pieces.

Like for the other pieces, I cut the missing elements out of brass and shell. I harvested some of the original horn from hidden under the bronzes for this purpose.

Cleaning and reglueing using sand bags

And Cawl for the rare flat spots

Before and after cleaning the brass

I recreated the missing elements using the little informations and inspiration from the rest of the decorative elements

We ordered some missing finials in France using a picture of a similar clock

While waiting for the bronzes to be cast in France, I put the clock to the black at the same time of a decanter I was working on at the time

Then the shell was re-engraved

And gold dust was laid in the engraving

Then french polish and bronze cleaning

And finally when the finials were received, we put it back together.

The body had a tendency to lean quite a bit to the back, so I added some dicreet washers on the back horses

And substantial ebony wedges on the top

Patrick also made a new top hinge for the door to make it work very well and a new key to fit the lock.

Now, it is ready to ship!

-- Patrice lejeune

Boulle Decanter Restoration

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 17:11:00 +0000

There has been a renewed interest in Boulle marquetry Napoleon III furniture in the last years.

Most of the time, unfortunately, the cost of restoration is to high for a lot of customers or even compared to the value of the piece. It is sad as those pieces need to be well maintained.

Here is a little story on restoring a 1860-1880 decanter with almost all the original Baccarat crystals.

It arrived with the usual loose and missing brass, but also it had been meanly sanded, without loosing the engraving though, and sprayed with lacquer.

First thing to do is to lift the loose brass and assess the damage.

Epoxy is not the way to reglue Boulle. It is usally used without cleaning under and therefore the brass is bulging and is extremely difficult to remove when you want to do a proper restoration

Neither is contact cement. In fact you can not imagine how many pieces we have to restore that have been “repaired” with contact cement. It is not long term efficient on any kind of veneering

After cleaning the substrate and the inside of the brass of any glue and oxydation

The pieces is remoisturized and the pieces that are not to damaged are rehydradrated new glue is inserted and pieces are reglued in a vacuum bag

Other way to reglue what can’t or is not easy to reglue in the vacuum bag is sand bags

or hard foam like in this case isolation material

The top was really in a very bad shape, especially as those pieces are made with wood that are deeped in acids and other chemicals to achieve the ebonizing

New brass pieces are engraved

Then the reopened kerfs and the engraving line are filled using the traditional pore filling methode but with soot black and charcoal to get a real nice black

You can see I was doing the black at the same time than a clock for which you can see the progress there
I am actually engraving the horn and it will be finished this week and I will post about it.

After a bit of polish the hinges and all the harware is put back on et voilà!!

Boulle Clock Restoration - Almost Done

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Fri, 25 Mar 2016 00:12:00 +0000

It has been a while since I posted anything as a friend reminded me couple days ago. So I thought I would do an update on couple projects I have been working on.

On an earlier post I had shown the start of a restoration on a Boulle clock.

We had restored the top part,

since I have been working on the 2 lower elements. I did not took a lot of picture of the restoration of the middle section

But I documented better the restoration of the lower section that was particularly damaged.

A lot of lifted elements

A quite a bit of missing brass

The last pictures shows the most difficult part to repair. There is very little indications left of the original design and it is on a tight radius surface.

First order of business is to remove the bronzes.

Lift the elements that wants to lift and rehydrate the glue for a deep cleaning.

Rubbing of the missing elements on thermal fax paper

The brass and the cavity needs to be cleaned.

Then missing elements are cut. The shell elements are cut on a CITES pre-banned shell with a black paper and black fish glue backing

The curved surface are always the fun one to glue. For some of the shape I used a compressed foam and on other sand bags. I screwed a piece of wood under the table with angled notches to get a good grip at different angles.

The front part of the lower element had not a lot of informations regarding all the missing top elements as I said earlier, but by adding the informations from each side and looking at the style of decoration throughout the clock, I was able to extrapolate a convincing design.

This picture was taken after engraving the elements

And during the pore filling which fills up the kerf marks and the engraving with black, “noir de fumée”, pigments.

Currently I am finishing the pore-filling on some elements of the clock as well as a Boulle decanter I have been working on, I will post later on this project, and soon the french polish is going to start, cleaning of the bronzes etc… But that will be for next time.

Treasure Box II

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 22:34:00 +0000

After 2 years we can now present our Treasure box II

Patrick Edwards and I started this project 2 years ago after completing our first series of 4 treasure Box.

The series II was inspired by an antique from an auction house

We created a new design and concept using the original layout that we really liked.

For our creations a re-creations we use sawn veneer mostly imported from Les FILS DE J. GEORGE in Paris

But we also started to re-saw our own

And even dye them as the dyed veneer seems to be less and less available

First step in marquetry after making the design is to cut and organize the patterns

One drawer for each sides

2 drawers also for each of the inside pictures, and for the top, being pretty busy, we used 4 drawers just for it.

Patrick had organized all our veneer packs to create our palette and choose the woods. We are making 4 boxes so all our pack will be 4 layers of veneer thick to create simultaneously 4 exact same pieces in one cut.

The first marquetry panels to be cut had to be the inside pictures. Once the color have been chosen they are numbered on a guide and each piece of pattern is glued accordingly to the packs.

All our pieces are cut on the marquetry chevalet

The pieces cut are then placed in an exploded lay out in a tray

Then they are all shaded in hot sand following a rough guide. Deeping and spooning are the main techniques used.

Time to cut the 2 backgrounds. The panels for the inside of the lid will have a more elaborate banding so I cut notches to give me the main lines of cut lines.

In piece by piece background cutting we use what we call “bridges”. They are small uncut parts that will keep the background islands in place and help you build your panels with more accuracy and less trouble.

Opening the background packs an putting the pictures together is next

My station is ready in front of the glue pot, my tray on the side

If you are interested, I did a video on putting one of those panel together

In the meantime the full blind dovetails for the boxes and the veneering of the inside with bloodwood sawn veneer has been done. The first marquetry are now being glued on the inside bottom panels and adjusted

Partitions in solid bloodwood are made

and adjusted

And the frisage (parquetry) of the inside panel is done

While progress is made on the box itself, the guide for the outside marquetry panels has to be made

Each piece is numbered with its wood from our list, in yellow the white bone, in green, the green bone and in blue the background islands.

Also cut on the chevalet

4 sides

and a top

And again, shading

As ebony is very brittle, I paperbacked my background veneers

Again, cut on the marquetry chevalet

Open and put together

The top has been a bit tricky to figure out. The problem was that I had pieces that looked like wrapping around the bone inlay oval. So I decided to cut the background in 2 steps, first the bone inlay, then rebuild the pack and finally cut the background.

To do so, I needed a way to rebuild the pack exactly and realign perfectly the second design in order to have my bone inlays at the right place as good as possible.

The solution we found was to build the first pack and draw axes lines

Do the same line on the next drawing but with notches, align is as good as possible, clamp it on the first pack and drill a small hole in the 4 corners, in what will be waste.

After unclamping the second drawing, the bone inlay cavity was then cut

The bone purflings previously soaked and ebony inlay were then installed on a light paper assembly board.

The pack was then rebuild using the small hole to realign the inside parts and the second drawing as close to perfect as possible using veneer nails.

Then the 3 pound pack was cut on the chevalet

Setting up the station for inlaying the top. My assembly board in front of the glue pot, and 4 trays around with all my pieces

If anybody knows how to do a morphing with multiple pictures, let me know as I have multiple pictures building this panel and I would like to morph them into one small movie.

We finally found at that point a solution to dye the bones all the way through

So it is time to cut the bone leaves

And have them dyed

Inlay them and apply saw dust and hide glue mastic

The sides are glued to the box

Hinges recess for the secret mechanism are installed on the inside panel

The hinges and lock recess are made

The inside of the box needs to be polished before glueing, as it is impossible to do nice french polish corners otherwise.

Do not be afraid to ruin your pad web on pore filling

This is how I like my pore filling to look like

Finish the polishing

Hinges are installed on the inside panels. The moving part will be the action for the

The box is glued using the Liquid Hide Glue Old Brown Glue.

Next day the excess glue is still a bit gummy and can be cleaned with cold water. Once dried you have a perfect french polished corner

Now that we have 4 glued boxes we can make the bloodwood secret trays to fit.

The tray has a 2mm recess to install a leather.

It is also time to build the base on which the box will be screwed on, the mechanism will be installed and the tray will slide on.

Time to get busy on the lid. The inside picture is build using the marquetry panels prepared couple months ago and kept on paper.

Then when all material was ready we glued the to sides on our lid. We did a video on that part to demonstrate veneering with Hot Hide Glue in a hot press to answer a question from one of our fellow lumberjockers ;-) Do not hesitate to ask question it helps us to chose topic for videos on our youtube channel

My favorite part, cleaning the paper ans see the picture for the first time appearing little by little.

It is also the first time when almost everything is veneered that you can see if it looks like you envisioned it.

While I am glueing the edges of the lid with sawn ebony

I am preparing the bandings that will finish the boxes

This banding will go around each panel, top and sides

The tray is “hidden” in the banding

Hinges and lock are set

And while I am doing the sanding

Patrick is installing the secret mechanism hardware

We did a video with our prototype of the system. We are actually out of springs, but as guys are still asking for it, we may order another bunch.

Time to pore fill. I started with the top and the inside of the lid, but more particularly the tray that we needed to send to LA to get the leather installed.

Once both sides of the lids were pore filled I polished the inside first so I could install the hinges and the lock latch.

And use them to be able to polish the outside without having anything touching my inside polish

At this time the trays were back

And the pore filling was done on the sides.

Couple days (week or weeks) to finish the polish. We did a video on french polishing that people seems to like, so if you want to watch it, please remember that there will be no need to tell me the sound is terrible, it has been commented countless times.

Putting the box together, and checking that everything works good.

And it was already time (2 years of work) to take pictures.

Patrick wanted to do a picture of us 2 so we borrowed a box from the first series for that purpose.

Hope you enjoyed the process

Patrice Lejeune

Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #22: French polishing

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 18:41:00 +0000

All right!

Last stretch this week. We will have pro picture next week and I will post them for you guys as well of a video of the mechanism in action.

But for now! Lets talk about french polish

While finishing the fine sanding

I have been pushing forward the pore filling and the polishing of the tray so it could be sent to LA for the leather.

Then I started with the pore-filling of the all box. The top first with the pore filling of the outside and inside every other day. When it was pore-filled I started the polish of the inside first

In the meantime I carry on with the box body pore filling up to the point it is nicely satin

Then I installed the hardware for the top

And installed the top with the hinges in order to be able to finish the top without having anything touching the fresh inside polish

The back is raised on a wood spacer

And the front touches another spacer only on the brass latch

When the leather came back I was almost done with polishing

And then, you know the story, put everything together and reflect on the past 2 years getting that project done.

Pro pictures should be in next week to share!

And of course delivery for our patient, but I believe very happy, clients and collectors.

Cheers and I will post the pictures next week

-- Patrice lejeune

Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #21: Banding - Mechanism - Hardware

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 23:26:00 +0000

Hello,
I had to stop working on the boxes for 2 weeks as we had classes here at the American School of French Marquetry. Great group

But I am back to work on them now.
First of all, all the banding is done.
They are composed on 2 bone and an ebony string inlay plus an ebony band.

The edges of the top are veneered with ebony first

Then I cut with a veneer saw the inside marquetry to size and instal the banding

The same is done for the sides

It is a bit tricky for the side with the tray so I did a little memory aid to not screw it up

The result is pretty good, it does not show much and is pretty discreet, which is nice for a secret mechanism.

Then I sanded the tray face and the tray edge together so we can adjust the mechanism to hold the tray at the right spot

Open

Closed

The inside of the lid is sanded until all marks from the sawing of the veneer disappears and level to the box. Then the hardware is installed

To level the bone banding this type of rasp-file seems to work the best. I do level the lid at the same time with the box.

It is amazing how different it looks with the banding on

So, in the meantime Patrick has worked on the mechanism.

We had Aaron Radelow mill the spring catch

The inside has a hinged part

So we have coil springs that are here to support it and keep it flush

When you press on it

It lowers the plunger and lower the spring catch

Releasing the hook from the tray catch

Releasing the tray that is push out by the side action springs

If my explanation on the mechanism is not clear, we may do a video to explain it later on. Let me know!

All right! Now back to work!

Next time sanding and finishing!

-- Patrice lejeune

New Video on our channel

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 01:26:00 +0000

We just published a new video on the reversibility of the animal glues and specifically hide glue through a presentation and 2 projects.
I hope you enjoy those and it answers some of the questions we receive often regarding the understanding of reversibility.
Of course Old Brown Glue has the same property.

Patrice Lejeune

Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #20: Veneering the lid and preparing the bandings

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Sat, 23 May 2015 01:30:00 +0000

Last time I posted I had glued down the boxes bodies with the inside already french polished

I worked on gluing the marquetry panels to the trimmed to size lid

My favorite moment is when you see it glued down right way up for the first time, it appears slowly while you remove the paper

This glueing of the marquetry on both side had to be precise has they had to be perfectly centered as well as the right way up as when you open the box

the owner will appreciate to get the inside bird the right way up.

Patrick and I were slightly stress over that eventuality. But nothing of the sort.
The other part of last weeks work was to create the hidden tray from blood-wood

Made to fit each box and numbered, with a the space in the back for the mechanism that Patrick and I decided on to release it. More on it in couple weeks.

There is also a recess to receive a gilt leather to make a real nice writing surface

Another part that I had to prepare was the base on which the tray will slide and the mechanism will be fixed. It is also a good way to old the small ebony bid we wanted as a base for the boxes

Last but not least was the preparation of all the banding for the marquetry.
Like the center oval it will be composed of 2 white bone and one ebony purflings

This means a bunch of ebony string inlay needs to be cut

As wells as ebony bands

To combine them. Each bone purflings has to be butted cleanly to the next one to hide as well as possible the joints on this super white material. Here is only the banding for the small sides

Here is to give an idea of the effect

Next time, all the banding will be glued and we will have the real effect with everything in place ready for installation of hardware and mechanism as well as finish.
Thank you for following!

-- Patrice lejeune

sreterLast time I posted I had glued down the boxes bodies with the inside already french polished

I worked on gluing the marquetry panels to the trimmed to size lid

My favorite moment is when you see it glued down right way up for the first time, it appears slowly while you remove the paper

This glueing of the marquetry on both side had to be precise has they had to be perfectly centered as well as the right way up as when you open the box

the owner will appreciate to get the inside bird the right way up.

Patrick and I were slightly stress over that eventuality. But nothing of the sort.
The other part of last weeks work was to create the hidden tray from blood-wood

Made to fit each box and numbered, with a the space in the back for the mechanism that Patrick and I decided on to release it. More on it in couple weeks.

There is also a recess to receive a gilt leather to make a real nice writing surface

Another part that I had to prepare was the base on which the tray will slide and the mechanism will be fixed. It is also a good way to old the small ebony bid we wanted as a base for the boxes

Last but not least was the preparation of all the banding for the marquetry.
Like the center oval it will be composed of 2 white bone and one ebony purflings

This means a bunch of ebony string inlay needs to be cut

As wells as ebony bands

To combine them. Each bone purflings has to be butted cleanly to the next one to hide as well as possible the joints on this super white material. Here is only the banding for the small sides

Here is to give an idea of the effect

Next time, all the banding will be glued and we will have the real effect with everything in place ready for installation of hardware and mechanism as well as finish.
Thank you for following!
-- Patrice lejeune Last time I posted I had glued down the boxes bodies with the inside already french polished

I worked on gluing the marquetry panels to the trimmed to size lid

My favorite moment is when you see it glued down right way up for the first time, it appears slowly while you remove the paper

This glueing of the marquetry on both side had to be precise has they had to be perfectly centered as well as the right way up as when you open the box

the owner will appreciate to get the inside bird the right way up.

Patrick and I were slightly stress over that eventuality. But nothing of the sort.
The other part of last weeks work was to create the hidden tray from blood-wood

Made to fit each box and numbered, with a the space in the back for the mechanism that Patrick and I decided on to release it. More on it in couple weeks.

There is also a recess to receive a gilt leather to make a real nice writing surface

Another part that I had to prepare was the base on which the tray will slide and the mechanism will be fixed. It is also a good way to old the small ebony bid we wanted as a base for the boxes

Last but not least was the preparation of all the banding for the marquetry.
Like the center oval it will be composed of 2 white bone and one ebony purflings

This means a bunch of ebony string inlay needs to be cut

As wells as ebony bands

To combine them. Each bone purflings has to be butted cleanly to the next one to hide as well as possible the joints on this super white material. Here is only the banding for the small sides

Here is to give an idea of the effect

Next time, all the banding will be glued and we will have the real effect with everything in place ready for installation of hardware and mechanism as well as finish.
Thank you for following!

-- Patrice lejeune

- See more at: http://lumberjocks.com/Patricelejeune/blog/58114#sthash.C4XudI7g.dpuf

Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #19: Finishing the insides and glueing the boxes

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Tue, 12 May 2015 23:57:00 +0000

I have been carry on working on the boxes with a 2 weeks pause for our february teaching session at the American School of French Marquetry. Great class, here are some pictures

More here

Anyway. Before the class started I had to finish the inside of the boxes with French Polish, before the room was taken over by the students.

There is different way of holding the pieces with nails bent in places

Or with small wood blocks

I like to have it lay out in circle so I can just turn around… endlessly it seems some times. I left the edges of my side accessible to finish them also at the same time.

I started to polish the blood wood first, as it has a tendency to bleed and I did not want to drag to much the color around.

For the center panel, I started with the outside until it was fixed, then the tulip, and finally the center. This helped me minimizing any color transfer.

I work on the pore filling until I have a nice smooth satin surface. For me the pore filling is the most important step in french polish.

Now, ready to glue

I did not took a picture of cutting the panel to create part of the hidden tray mechanism but I will develop that on the mechanism trade, the next one.

I used Old Brown Glue, to give me plenty of time to glue the piece

But also the reversibility which offers an easy cleaning with cold water.

This morning, first box glued. 3 more to go and I can start working on the base, the tray and the lid, while Patrick works on the mechanism.

Just for your curiosity, Patrick posted on the mechanism we decided to use on the boxes trays on his blog. And we also did a small video.

See you on the next episode!

-- Patrice lejeune

Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #17: Getting ready to polish the inside of the box

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Tue, 12 May 2015 23:42:00 +0000

All right!

Last time I was done with the marquetry and I had done the mastic on them.

I glued them down with Hide Glue and cleaned with called water the paper that hold the pieces from the front with Hot Hide Glue.

When all the paper is gone with just cold water, I use one of those green scrubs to clean of the rest of the glue.

Next step finish all the little details in all the inside parts. Rabbets on the bottom

Hinges on the bottom for the mechanism for the release of the tray, I will detail this later. When it is done of course.

Hinges for the lid

Blood-wood and that bloody kiln dried beech are so hard on the chisel, it seems I spend half my time sharpening…. Especially when installing the lock

Ready to install the polishing area. I need to finish the french polish of the inside before next class of American School of French Marquetry…

I will also work on the polish of the apron on a pair of federal table Patrick is making

Overall not a very exciting post, I know, but thought I will share the progress anyway.

Next episode, French Polish of the inside of the box and gluing of the box.

Thank you for following!

-- Patrice lejeune

Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #16: Finished with the marquetry panels

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Tue, 12 May 2015 23:38:00 +0000

With those and of year year festivities, I still have been able to advance a bit this project

I finished to put together the marquetry panels.

The bone where finally dyed

I inserted those last pieces in the top and sides

To be on the safe side I reheated the panels on hot plates paper side down after sprinkling it with water and pressing it down real hard with some plenty of newspaper and foam on the back. The idea is to press real hard all the wood pieces, that have some discrepancy in thickness, to the front of the paper while the glue melts with the heat from the plates and the moisture from the water, and create an even surface for the front, the paper side.

I re-glued the marquetry on new assembly board to be able to do the mastic to fill up the gap but mainly the engraving line of the marquetry.

Next step veneering.

-- Patrice lejeune

Boulle Clock Restoration - Part #1

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 17:16:00 +0000

We were contacted by a client to restore his Boulle cartel clock.

Boulle is no fun to restore, it is time consuming and quite a special.

For budget reasons we are restoring his piece by stages. The clock is composed of 3 parts and each of them will be restored in 3 sessions.

We will start with the top

We remove the bronzes

The unglued brass pieces are lifted and rubbing is made for the missing brass elements

The cavities are full of oxidized glue that needs to be cleaned

We apply moisture enough to bring back the fish glue to gel but not to much, as it will un-glue the shell

The back of the brass needs to be cleaned also, b humidifying the glue and scraping it carefully without distorting the brass pieces.

Then the pieces are glued back using fish glue

My favorite for this curves is sand bag or hot sand bag

Time for clean up with “eau japonaise”, an acidic solution with a slight rubbing compound to take of the crud.

Of course with boulle, it will un-glue and I will have to re-glue and re-glue, until it is finally stable.

Then again more rubbing for the shell this time. I used some of our old stock legal shell, the vegetarian type that was used in the 19th century thinner than the meat eater used in earlier boulle. This clock as a black backed shell which is not the mos common color, usually they are backed with red.

Rubbing

Fitting and gluing

I did not take picture of the engraving of the brass but the new pieces had to be engraved. Here are the tools

The tools I used the most. The two on the left mostly with a predilection for the losange on the brass

I have couple left over engraving on bones for a repair we did on a bargueño those where a little or not deep enough so we have them. The bone is very brittle like the horn or the shell and the side of the engraving tool the “burin” needs to be real shap to avoid excess splitting and jagged edge on the engraving lines. So I use it to test the sharpening for the shell engraving

Brass is really tough on the tool and I need to resharpen often as soon as the point is dull, otherwise you rip and this is not good. Each time you sharpen you have to test your attack angle to go straight and not get draged deep in the material, that it turns well or permit regular straight lines etc…

Then pore-filling (more accurately gap filling) and engraving line filling with a mix of pumice and black ash first then ash alone.

I have rarely seen the horn being engraved but on that clock it is, one of the reason to choose a black shell

So after the black “pore filling” I cleaned the black filler out of the shell but the engraving was to faint for the gold to take so I had to re-engrave the shell to create a cavity a little deeper in order to be able to put some gold in there.

Then it is time for french polish

Re-glue the parts

Clean the dirty bronzes while I clean the hide glue of the french polish and touch up the finish where I may have left a print or two

I put an overlay of orange shellac to go a little more on the gold side

Some of the details of the new brass pieces

And now put back everything together

Before

And after

The client is happy and is going to send the next part, so see ya in episode 2 of Boulle Clock Repair!

Thank you for following

-- Patrice lejeune

Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #14: Inside of the box "Fisage" (parquetry)

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 22:29:00 +0000

After almost a month away in Europe, London and France, I am back and working on the boxes again. It was really nice to go back home as I haven’t been able to do so for 4 years. It was also nice to be back, through away the jacket and sweater, an put on the flip flops.

Well, regarding the boxes.

When I came back I put the already cut bone leaves in green dye

and while waiting to feel up the holes in the marquetry,

I started working on the inside of the boxes. The marquetry were already cut for a while now

Veneered, and the boxes framed with full blind dovetails and veneered on the inside with Old Brown Glue.

I build the partitions out of solid bloodwood

Mortise and dado on the inside of the boxes and cut the inside panel to size.

We were going to do the inside all bloodwood, but while fooling around in the veneer room, I found a really nice flitch of tulip cut in the late 19th century and we decided to use it. Again I used Old Brown glue to glue the frisage (parquetry)

I also started to build the lid frisage (parquetry) without the bloodwood framing that I reserve for last to hit the corner at the right spot.

Here is the glue side so we can see the effect better

I can tell you, when you work on something interesting like that, it is nice to be back from vacation.

Next, green bone incrustation and veneering of the boxes sides.

-- Patrice lejeune

Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #13: Top incrustation

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 18:58:00 +0000

As promised some news on the marquetry top for the treasure box series #2

The challenge here is to insert the oval white bone inlay first then cut the rest of the background repositioning the pack perfectly as some of the marquetry looks like it moves in front and in the back of those bones.

I first build the pack with 4 layers of paperbacked ebony sawn veneer

I used a idea of mine and an idea from Patrick to locate perfectly the veneer with the 2 drawings that had to be used to cut this background twice.

I used lines and a v cut to clamp the pack with the first drawing and he second drawing

and drill 4 holes with a bit the right size to use veneer nails to rebuild the back after cutting the oval.

The drawing for the oval has bridges to keep everything at the right spot

Cutting the cavities on the marquetry chevalet

I prepared a light paper assembly board as I had to glue it twice on an assembly board and did not want to add to much paper and glue to the front.

I had to cut some ebony string inlays to go in sandwich between 2 bones purflings.

And soaked the bone to make them more bendable.

Here is the background with the oval cut done, the ebony string inlay and the bone. The assembly board is ready, the glue is hot and I have podcast on my Ipad, ready to go.

The background is slapped down on the assembly board with hot hide glue

I cut the middle bridges as I go and insert the 3 string inlays in the cavity, here is a particularly horrible picture to illustrate this step

You can see now the locator hole Patrick thought about to rebuild the pack precisely

and the rebuilding in action

Ready to cut some more.

The pack was fairly heavy (3 Lb) and the ebony is really hard to cut.

It took me roughly 5 days with 5 hours of cutting a day to finish it. This is after 3 days.

But the locators did work great. As you can see the pieces I had to keep as they were to small for bridges are exactly the same, better than expected.

When I open a pack I always keep all my trash you never know what you are going to miss

Like this broken bridge

I got myself ready for incrustation

A series of picture to illustrate the incrustation session, almost 2 weeks for 4 panels

And as usual I love details shot. Please pardon this excess of pictures, but this has been my biggest marquetry challenge so far and I did sweat a lot on that part, and not only because I was working at 85-92 degrees because of successive heat waves…

Thank you for following !

-- Patrice lejeune

Treasure Box - Series #2 - Post #12: Sides Marquetry incrustation

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 23:39:00 +0000

I have been back full time on our boxes for over a week now so I have some progress to report.

I have been selecting veneer out of our veneer cellar for the ebony background.

From the experience of the previous series I paperbacked the ebony as it is a very brittle wood. Better be safe than sorry

Then built the packs in 4 layers without forgetting the grease paper, one of my specialty in the mistake department. Teaching marquetry has been a great help as by reminding the students to not forget it, it seems I myself stopped forgetting to insert it.

When the packs are made I glue the design on

another lesson from the previous series is to drill the packs for the nails. So on this project I used red for the bridges, to be really visible, blue for the nails and a red dot for the entry points.

Next step is to cut the background on the chevy. Ebony is really tough on the blades, very abrasive.

I am cutting all the line away because I really do not want to have to trim the ebony, which may happen if I am to greedy for precision.

Everything is kept inside the pack with tape to keep the integrity of the pack and avoid breaking any piece of the fragile background.

When I am done cutting I remove the tape and carefully remove the plugs of waste.

Then I open the pack layer by layer. I keep the rest pressed at all time to avoid hygrometric variations, as I said before, I really do not want to have to trim my ebony. Also everything is kept in a tray as precaution until I am done incrusting a panel, you sometime do not know right away if you have broken a piece.

16 marquetry panels, some of them are on the other side of the assembly boards, 4 times 4 sides.

The green bone are still in the dye I will incrust them later

An I really like some of Patrick choices for the color palette, I think we improved from the first series, we always learn.

Next step, cutting the tops backgrounds and this is going to be a really difficult job. In yellow, the bone element, in green the green bone leaves and in blue the isolated background elements that I have to bridge in place and carefully keep.

This is a really exiting project

Cheers

-- Patrice lejeune

WPatrickEdwards: Fine Art or Decorative Art? Makes a Difference!

noreply@blogger.com (Patrice Lejeune) — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 16:56:00 +0000

WPatrickEdwards: Fine Art or Decorative Art? Makes a Difference!: Made of Wood. How Can This Not Be Fine Art? Three things happened to me when I lived in Paris off and on for a decade in the 1990'...