10/13/2008
Awhile back I received a wonderful response to a post of mine entitled Indian Chief Intarsia Tutorial both from readers here and from readers at Lumberjocks where I had also posted it. The funny thing was that most of the response came from my way of using spray adhesive. So with that said I thought I would rewrite about it minus a project and perhaps and hopefully clearer and more in depth.
When first starting out scrolling and doing Intarsia I learned from magazines how to do things. Mainly from the magazine called Creative Woodworks & Crafts and another called Woodworking for women. It was these two magazines that pretty much got me started in my woodworking journey. I consider them my favorite mags out there by far for what I like to do.
Whenever I would come across instructions on how to place a pattern on wood for scrolling or intarsia, there were mainly two ways. One is to use transfer paper and/or carbon paper where you can take your paper pattern and simply copy by drawing the pattern onto the wood. This is a wonderful way of doing it, but it has its limitations.This could be another post in itself, but for right now, I will say there are times when you would not want to draw right onto your wood, or you could not do so due to the type of wood, the darkness etc. However for simple segmentation projects, (where the whole project is done from one piece of wood as in this) My Feel Good Project it is a great way of transferring your pattern.
But this is not what this post is about.
The instructions just about anywhere that I have ran into always call for you to spray your paper pattern on the back with spray adhesive wait a few seconds until tacky and then place this directly on your chosen piece of wood. From there it states to then cover that now placed pattern with packaging tape.
The reason for using packaging tape is , to me one of the most critical things you need to use while in the shop for fret work or intarsia, etc. when it comes to using a scroll saw and/or band saw. The reason why is the packaging tape when used cools down your blade. When your blade is going through your wood either up and down as in a scroll saw or continuously as in a band saw it gets hot due to the friction and for some reason if the tape is used it keeps your blades cooler. A cooler blade does not warp and/or stretch out as quickly but MOST IMPORTANT it does not burn your wood. Those hot blades can really wreac some havoc on wood especially your hardwoods. And when you are doing fret work it is almost impossible to fix or sand away a burned spot in your project.
I use one of these tape rollers when I apply my tape. It is just easier for me this way. What ever is comfortable for you is always the best way I feel. As long as safety has not been jeopardized.Now again this is my personal preferance (the way I transfer my pattern to my wood) and may not be the way you personally like doing this.
But this is how it goes. Instead of placing your paper pattern with the spray adhesive directly onto the wood as stated above. I do it backwards! I place my tape directly onto my piece of wood I have chosen to use. I then spray my paper pattern with my spray adhesive and again let it get tacky, and place the paper pattern onto my now taped wood.
This is why.
When it comes time to removing your pattern from your now cut out project, you now have "glued paper" to remove. This tends to become a very "sticky" situation. LOL!!! Great humor huh? Anyway if it is a fretwork piece you have a lot of little cut out pieces that perhaps don't need a lot of tugging on them as they are easily breakable. One way of removing this, if doing it this way is with mineral spirits. I will also say for the most part mineral spirits does do the trick. Again however this is time consuming, smelly, messy, etc.
But if you do it my way, all you need to do is tear off the piece of tape. With it comes your pattern as shown below
I ripped off some of the paper here so that you could see how it comes off with the tape.
Without a doubt this is not a sure fire way of doing this every single time.Sometimes extreme fretwork does not need tape being pulled off of it either. Common sense and the type of wood etc, will give you a better understanding on what option you should use.
I am sharing this tip again because of the response from the first time, but more so to give you another option to try when it comes to placing paper templates on your projects. I do it this way more than I would say 98% of the time. It is only a suggestion that I urge you to at least give a try. It opened up a lot for me. I seemed to always run into problems when it came to removing the template. Some of this I am sure came from my inexperiance at the time. But since then and with a little more experiance under my belt, this is one tip I will continue to use. For me it is just plain simpler, neater, and less of a hassle for myself all the way around.
I would love to get any and all comments on this post, and I would also love to know if you try it how do you feel about it.
Until then
Safe Scrolling!
