Backyard Birds – Part 22

My designed involved making a frame around the cabinet door that would be decorated with marquetry to look like a windowsill. This marquetry was pretty simple, and since it was mostly straight lines, I cut most of the wood with a veneer saw instead of on the scroll saw. I used maple veneer for the highlights, cherry veneer for the lighter shadows, and walnut veneer for the darker shadows.

I made a substrate for the marquetry out of a combination of MDF and strips of padauk, as well as the special enclosure for the opening mechanism that I had made previously.

When I glued the pieces of the substrate together, I was concerned that the cut-out for the vase could break under the pressure of the clamps, so I cut out a small piece of MDF to insert in the cut-out while it was in the clamps.

At the last minute before gluing the marquetry to the substrate, I decided to add a fallen sunflower petal to the windowsill next to the vase. After I glued up the frame, I trimmed off the excess veneer and cleaned up most of the edges, leaving the cut-out for the vase to clean up once I had the cabinet built and the door on hinges.