I’ve been searching all over the place for sources on how to do a hide glue constructed marquetry panel for a rather large coffee table top. I’m a hobbyist with pretty much no budget but I do have a veneer hammer and a lot of hide glue granules left from my last hammer veneering project. The project turned out rather well and like most people say, pretty much everything went wrong until I figured it out. So that leads me to wonder how the masters of old did marquetry. Pretty much everywhere I look I see people using presses or vacuum techniques for just about anything but single panel veneering.

So here are my problems I am trying to figure out.

It’s relatively easy to get things laid out and taped up so they fit well. However, it’s really difficult to realize how much the seams move when you hit them with a nice amount of wet and warm hide glue. That was my major problem last time. Any solutions? Maybe some way to pretreat the wood so that it’s expanded or contracted before you piece them and assemble? Otherwise I can’t see how marquetry with perfect matching seams can be done.

If this is the only problem, I was thinking about using some underlying veener to piece together larger marquetry panels and minimize the seams. But I’m still worried about when you introduce the nice warm and wet hot glue to two different woods running in two different directions with an inpenetrable layer of PVA between them. It seems like a huge possibility for an expensive mistake.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t have a budget for an expensive vacuum press so unless I can find someone in the Chicago area to borrow theirs, it’s not an option. A press may be workable but I don’t have one and would have to buy a lot of new clamps to get the pressure I need. I’m open to suggestions for resources that discuss marquetry with hide glue so if you know any, please let me know!

Thanks in advance for the help.