Backyard Birds – Part 29

Written By Sasha Kopf

As soon as I had finished gluing up the cabinet, my dad noticed a problem with my marquetry panel: there should be a trompe-l'œil shadow in the top right corner. I’m not sure how I missed that one, but of course I only realized it once it was 10× more difficult to fix it

Photograph of the cabinet with a green arrow pointing to where there should be a marquetry shadow

In order to fix it, I had to inlay a shadow without damaging the leg of the cabinet.

I used a router to take off some veneer in the corner, setting up fences with clamps and scrap wood so that the router would only go over the area that I wanted to remove.

Photograph of the corner of the cabinet with pieces of scrap wood clamped to it as a fence and a triangular piece routered out of the veneer

My first pass with the router wasn’t quite deep enough. Another pass with the router and some chiseling did the trick.

Photograph of the corner of the cabinet with a mostly triangular piece cut out of the veneer

I made a marquetry shadow with cherry and walnut veneer to go into the corner that I had cut out.

Photograph of the corner of the cabinet with veneer to create a marquetry shadow placed onto it, ready to be glued in

Then I glued and clamped the patch into place.

Photo of the corner of the cabinet with clamps pressing down the marquetry patch
Sasha Kopf
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Backyard Birds – Part 30
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Backyard Birds – Part 28