Since I have made furniture making my profession, it is of course also nice to earn money with it. Since I received a lot of positive feedback on the serving tray with Escher style marquetry, I took that up first.
I bought a huge piece of mahogany from a befriended furniture maker and I was able to obtain old oak parquet parts through another colleague. I used them to make a series of tray frames. For the base plates, I designed various geometric patterns, which were cut out of wood veneer.
I learned that some types of wood are better suited for marquetry than others. Beech veneer starts to bubble enormously when you apply glue to it, and is almost impossible to smooth out. Oak veneer has very hard grains and is difficult to cut.
I also encountered challenges with laser cutting. When making the circles, the laser produced a perforation pattern. I decided to have the four sheets perforated and then cut them out by hand. In the meantime I dug around in the Lightburn manual (laser engraving software) -in vain- and shared the problem on their forum. It turns out there is a ‘perforation mode’. Somehow it was turned on. Anyway – now I know where to find it. Don’t forget to check it for a next project!!
The serving trays and the digital designs are for sale in my webshop
