Non-wood accents in marquetry

[David Kenagy]

Making a marquetry image of a Native American character, “The storyteller”. Small parts of the character are highlighted with turquoise (necklace) and silver (wrist band). These characters aren’t intended to look like a painting; the colors and lines are a bit like cartoons.

Since most woods don’t have turquoise or silver colors, I thought I might stain some maple with turquoise or gray for these highlights. I’ll experiment a bit, to see whether the colors will stand up to sanding or scraping.

I’ve seen such colors in Woodcraft (in the aisle with resins). I’m not confident they’ll scrape/sand as flat as the woods they’re near.

Does anybody have experience or ideas?
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[Jim Becker]

Use an alcohol soluble dye like Transtint or a leather dye like Angelus which is similar. These do not raise the grain (much) and you can go right to finishing afterward. No dye or other coloration is going to stand up to real sanding...a light scuff with a white pad to get rid of any fuzzies, but not sanding.

[Daniel Smith]

As Jim mentioned, staining or dying veneer will not go deep enough to allow the piece to be sanded without changing the color. There are ways to dye veneer to the core in your shop, but the one I've tried is very time consuming. You can purchase dyed veneer commercially and I've had luck with this route in the little bit of marquetry I've done. I'd check with B&B Rare Woods, Cue Veneer and Certainly Wood to see which has the colors you're interested in.