Veneered Tray - Lg Mouth Bass

Hi,

Here’s my first attempt at veneering. I needed to have a project, as I not too good at practicing for the sake of it. Which is why it takes me sooo looong to improve I guess :).

I made the tray out of aln old back door, as I am too stingy to throw away old timber away. Not as much of it was usable as it might first appear. Lots of joints make most of it fairly unusable; I didn’t know doors were that complicated :)

So why a Bass? I hear you ask, well if not actually ask, maybe mildly curious. Well I am a keen fisherman, who for his sins, is hooked (sorry about that) on Bass fishing, not a sensible fish to choose given I live in the UK and only get to go to the US once every couple of years.

So a bass it had to be.

I started by removing all of the hardware from the Door and then cut it up into ‘lumps’ along the joint lines.

This got the two sides (I think these are called Stiles) and three rails, along with two panels.

The panels I fed through my Thicknesser to give my the substrate for the tray bottom. I used one of the Stiles for the tray sides.

The main part of the veneer was Pear, I bookmatched this for the bottom, but did not do this for the inside as the fish pattern would take up most of the tray.

I cut the veneer out using a Birdmouth jig I made out of MDF, it took AGES. I used a jewelers saw, with the finest blade I could buy. I broke loads, each time the blade came into contact with the jig, the pressure broke the blade, but I learnt and that’s the most important thing.

Short grain on the fin veneer caused a few interesting moments and I had to redo these several times.

I am very happy with the way it turned out, particularly to wavy effect on the Pear backdrop, just like a underwater effect

Here is the last piece of the door not sure how much I will get out of this piece, but you never know …

So here it is, comments welcome, but be gentle it was my first :)

I was also quite happy with the mitres, they took a bit of tweaking with a shoulder plane, but they seem to fit ok, in the end

And here is the close up, shows most of the flaws, but also the wazy effect

By the way this is also my first project posting, just so much good stuff on this site

-- Keep your tools sharp, your mind sharper and the coffee hot