looking for simple wood string inlay designs
kelleybell21
| Posted in General Discussion on
Hello fellow woodworkers,
I am looking for books, pictures, designs, how to materials, etc. for simple wood string inlay designs for beginners. Please advise if you know of information that I might be able to learn from and apply to my work. I have done some simple string inlay and find these techniques and designs to be a lot of fun to add to a furniture project. Thank you and I look forward to your responses.
Replies
You're looking at a very good resource indeed for stringing, inlay and a lot of other related techniques - the FWW website with its large back catalogue of articles about these.
To get an idea of just how much info there is here, just type "inlay" within the FWW search box.
Hi lat_axe,
Thanks so much for the suggestion. I'll do that. Jim
lat_axe advice is the best. One thing I had heard is that apprentices often work on inlay designs so totally something you can do. Mostly repetitive operations. I could also agrue some of the fancy cutting boards you see on YouTube are often using the same general approach to get those nice geometric designs. To date, I mostly purchase my inlays at Rockler and Woodcraft as they have nice selections. Much overlap between the two companies in terms of selection.
I thought he was talking about stringing, not banding.
You’re correct. I didn’t read carefully.
I’m not sure. You might be right 😊
I don't know about designs but Steve Latta has a nice DVD on stringing and line and berry. I believe it can be purchased at Lie Nielsen. Steve also writes for FWW so you can find articles from him here as well.
This FWW video series by Kevin Rodel, building a Stickley-style bed, has four episodes (6-9 inclusive) covering stringing.
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2017/07/27/ep-6-inlay-prep-creating-banding-templates.
$99 for a year's subscription to the full FWW historical content includes this video series and several others that are very well produced and cover a vast range of techniques in highly informative detail. The $99 also gets you hundreds of articles from the magazine, in pdf format, including many about stringing, banding and other inlay techniques; the various Steve Latta articles about stringing in Federal furniture included.
FWW magazine and, later, this website were my main and best teacher of all things woodworking. I recommend it above all other books, websites or other sources for the self-teaching woodworker .... although the middle years of Pop Woodworking was pretty good too albeit not so high in "fine" or scope.
I'm really just here to second Lat_axe's advice. I built the Kevin Rodel bed mentioned above and I've used a bunch of Steve Latta's articles and techniques for federal style furniture. I have the Lie Nielson stringing tools designed by Steve Latta and these are great, but not available anymore. You can build these tools if you want and there is an article somewhere on how to build these. Lee Valley currently sells similar tools. Steve Latta is probably the best source for stringing techniques and he has publishes a number of articles, videos, and books. I can't recommend these enough.
This article in particular was the one I used to jump from simple rectangular stringing to a more advanced design
https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/tables-and-desks/liven-up-legs-with-traditional-stringing
Steve Latta uses fairly traditional techniques in his work. The Kevin Rodel videos use a template and router for inlays and banding. Very useful for repeated designs.
Bob Van Dyke has a great article and associated video on inlayed fans.
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2017/05/31/master-class-inlaid-fan
Finally, during the federal period every east coast city had a "leg design" you can literally just google "city name" federal style table leg and find a bunch of images. Almost all of these designs use stringing, banding, and inlay techniques so you need to advance all three of these skills at the same time.
I found that basic geometric patterns are lots of fun to start. Lines, curves, triangles, solids are fun to explore. Combine them with color and texture and you’re on your way. Lay it out on paper first. Sketch! Search art and craft forms other than wood for inspiration.