I have always admired the segmented bowl and vase turnings accomplished by the many fine wood-turners in our NCWW association, and often thought about ways to achieve some of aspects of those designs on flat surfaces. I explored inlay, intarsia and other options, but it wasn't until a woodworker friend in NY brought "the book" to my attention, that I recognized the potential of laminated designs in solid wood surfaces.
I'll try to be brief and will be glad to try and answer any questions you might have if you get involved with this technique.
WARNING: What you are about to see is VERY time consuming, wood usage intensive, and highly addictive !!!!:gar-Bi
It's called Laminar or Geocentric design. Like the name, it starts as laminations of strips of wood..BUT the laminate must be perfectly symmetrical about the center line, with corresponding strips on either side of center being exactly the same thickness (do all your planing of different pieces at the same time without budging the planer settings). I found a book by Clarence Rannefeld on this that explains it in great detail, it's out of print, but you can find places selling it for $185 in paperback new
. I found a copy on one of the Amazon seller sites used, but in excellent condition for $38.. so if you want one, look around thoroughly and you'll probably find one at a reasonable price..
These are the basics. Start with the "laminate"..any combination of woods you like but glue them up as above
You will need to build a jig, something like this..
The jig in my case has four setting angles for the fence,... fixed position with threaded inserts..22.5, 30, 45 and 60 degrees. Note the two clamps and the two (hard to see) plastic triangles attached to a moveable fixture at the back (which actually is the front)
Place the laminate in the jig and angle cut it at whatever angle you want, put in a stop block, so all the cutoffs are exactly the same width.. You are not using the plastic triangles at this point. The width of the cutoff is obviously part of the pattern design later. You will wind up with a bunch of cut-off that look like this
Note that the long initial laminates just got a lot shorter and fatter. If you look close you can see that I've numbered each one, because you are now going to flip over every other one, and you get the best continuity of pattern with adjacent cut-offs. You just flip them and glue them.
You've created a "zig-zag pattern (what John W. referred to as 'chevrons")..that the author calls Generation 1. Now comes the tricky part. You need to cut down through the new laminate strip at exactly the center line of either the ascending or descending slope of each zig-zag. To locate that center you need to very carefully measure the distance from where either segment changes direction. It's your choice, but once you decided to cut through the up slope or the down slope you have to stick with it. Subtract the saw kerf from the distance you just measured and divide by two. Make up two strips of wood exactly the width you just calculated and place them on either side of the blade. Line up the edges of the plastic triangles exactly on the edge of those strips. You will use their edges as the reference lines as you slide the Gen 1 piece under them. You need a clamping arrangement that holds the cutoff in place as you retract the blade from cutting it.
Again number each cut-off sequentially like this
and then you flip every other one
Now glue these up. You will note that things just got shorter and fatter again.
and trim the edges wherever you want as long as it's the same on both sides.
You have now made a Generation2 laminate. Just repeat the whole process for Gen3...the higher Gens get very short...and like I said at the start, you can go through a lot of wood
The author has a table in the book. With four cutting angles and a Gen2 laminate there are 48 possible pattern shapes..and an infinite number if you remember you had a choice on the width of the first cut-offs..making them wider or narrower just makes the same pattern bigger or smaller.
If we go to a Gen3 the number is 384 possible patterns, Gen 4 is 3,072, and Gen 5 is 24,578.:gar-La; I haven't done the math but I assume he's right.
Here are few Gen2 designs I did while experimenting with this technique
The little table I displayed in the first post is a Gen2 with both cutting angles set at 45 degrees.
I'm going to leave it at that for now. You turners might be interested in Rannefeld's
method for putting these kind of designs into bowls, vases etc. He goes into pretty good detail on this.
Don
I'll try to be brief and will be glad to try and answer any questions you might have if you get involved with this technique.
WARNING: What you are about to see is VERY time consuming, wood usage intensive, and highly addictive !!!!:gar-Bi
It's called Laminar or Geocentric design. Like the name, it starts as laminations of strips of wood..BUT the laminate must be perfectly symmetrical about the center line, with corresponding strips on either side of center being exactly the same thickness (do all your planing of different pieces at the same time without budging the planer settings). I found a book by Clarence Rannefeld on this that explains it in great detail, it's out of print, but you can find places selling it for $185 in paperback new
. I found a copy on one of the Amazon seller sites used, but in excellent condition for $38.. so if you want one, look around thoroughly and you'll probably find one at a reasonable price..
These are the basics. Start with the "laminate"..any combination of woods you like but glue them up as above
You will need to build a jig, something like this..
The jig in my case has four setting angles for the fence,... fixed position with threaded inserts..22.5, 30, 45 and 60 degrees. Note the two clamps and the two (hard to see) plastic triangles attached to a moveable fixture at the back (which actually is the front
)Place the laminate in the jig and angle cut it at whatever angle you want, put in a stop block, so all the cutoffs are exactly the same width.. You are not using the plastic triangles at this point. The width of the cutoff is obviously part of the pattern design later. You will wind up with a bunch of cut-off that look like this
Note that the long initial laminates just got a lot shorter and fatter. If you look close you can see that I've numbered each one, because you are now going to flip over every other one, and you get the best continuity of pattern with adjacent cut-offs. You just flip them and glue them.
You've created a "zig-zag pattern (what John W. referred to as 'chevrons")..that the author calls Generation 1. Now comes the tricky part. You need to cut down through the new laminate strip at exactly the center line of either the ascending or descending slope of each zig-zag. To locate that center you need to very carefully measure the distance from where either segment changes direction. It's your choice, but once you decided to cut through the up slope or the down slope you have to stick with it. Subtract the saw kerf from the distance you just measured and divide by two. Make up two strips of wood exactly the width you just calculated and place them on either side of the blade. Line up the edges of the plastic triangles exactly on the edge of those strips. You will use their edges as the reference lines as you slide the Gen 1 piece under them. You need a clamping arrangement that holds the cutoff in place as you retract the blade from cutting it.
Again number each cut-off sequentially like this
and then you flip every other one
Now glue these up. You will note that things just got shorter and fatter again.
and trim the edges wherever you want as long as it's the same on both sides.
You have now made a Generation2 laminate. Just repeat the whole process for Gen3...the higher Gens get very short...and like I said at the start, you can go through a lot of wood
The author has a table in the book. With four cutting angles and a Gen2 laminate there are 48 possible pattern shapes..and an infinite number if you remember you had a choice on the width of the first cut-offs..making them wider or narrower just makes the same pattern bigger or smaller.
If we go to a Gen3 the number is 384 possible patterns, Gen 4 is 3,072, and Gen 5 is 24,578.:gar-La; I haven't done the math but I assume he's right.
Here are few Gen2 designs I did while experimenting with this technique
The little table I displayed in the first post is a Gen2 with both cutting angles set at 45 degrees.
I'm going to leave it at that for now. You turners might be interested in Rannefeld's
method for putting these kind of designs into bowls, vases etc. He goes into pretty good detail on this.
Don
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