I am making a cabinet with quilted maple veneer facings for drawers and doors. To let the quilted maple dominate, the edging will be plain maple. Here's the problem: my soft maple has a slight gray cast and even with dye is a poor color match. What should I do?
If you are trying to get there dying only the soft maple it could be very difficult or virtually impossible. My suggestion is to find different plain maple with a color cast that is more appropriate. Or, set off the quilting with a darker banding. Look at FWW the current issue of FWW magazine for an example. Matching colors is probably the most difficult finishing task, at least if you can't just dye the whole thing dark brown.Quote:
Originally Posted by John Huber
Steve's advise is sage. Don't use material for your project that is unsuitable for the job. You put too much time and work into it...and that quilted maple is darn expensive, too...complement it with material worthy of the responsibility. If you can't fine soft maple that will do the trick, try hard maple.
Thanks for your advice. Kind of reminds me of an old country saying, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."
John, choosing your lumber carefully for grain/figure match and color is the FIRST step in the finishing process. Nothing you can do later outside of several coats of paint can "fix" problems caused by unsuitable material.
John, I've been reading the responses to this thread and realize my thoughts on the matter ran in a completely different direction, to wit:
You said you wanted to "let the quilted maple dominate", so why is "color match" even an issue? A color that complements the QM, yes, but is a close match necessary...or even desirable?
Please tell me more about what you mean by complementary color. I'm certainly open to a fresh idea. I'm using walnut surround for a much darker contrast to the quilted maple. Others have suggested cherry, but that would also be a darker tone.
A darker or at least contrasting surround is pretty much what I had in mind. Something I learned long ago as a photographer was that the best way to make the colors in a print really pop was to use a black mat (instead of the usual white) when framing.Quote:
Originally Posted by John Huber
Ok, now I'm confused...where does this soft maple come in?
So the soft maple edging wouldn't actually border the quilted maple but be separated by the walnut ?? If that's the case, how much would you really notice the color difference? This is also on edges that wouldn't show until you pulled the drawers out? Is the door inset (hidden edges) or overlay? And could you just continue the surround onto the edges?Quote:
Originally Posted by John Huber
These are just questions that came to mind based on your last post. Like Lee, understanding how the soft maple figures in is key to offering ideas.
Thanks for your responses.
I'm sorry to have been so unclear. The quilted maple is veneer on a plywood substrate for both the doors and the drawers. Both the doors and the drawer stack each have a walnut (contrasting) surround.
But I want to protect the exposed edges of the veneer. In an earlier project, I used curly maple, but found the different figures between the curly and quilted parts to be distracting. So I want an edging (around quilted maple veneered components but inside the walnut surround) that has a minimal presentation (almost invisible). I thought about veneer tape, but in my experience it doesn't provide much protection.
I'm still curious about "complementary" color.
Ok, so visually (doors/drawers closed) it looks like a very thin boundary stripe between the QM and the walnut. Got it.
Well, there's three obvious answers in that situation:
1. match the QM (inside)
2. match the walnut (outside)
3. accentuate the stripe by using something else altogether
You were going to try #1 and ran into match issues. Doing #3 with something like cherry (between the two in color) would work, as would something darker (like wenge)...as long as it's thin (like 3/32 or so), either would be fine IMHO, but any thicker and it would look too busy.
And #2 would probably be the easiest, but depending on whether you have enough of the original walnut stock left, you might just run into the same issues you have now.