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Intarsia or Segmentation
For many women in woodworking the first thing that comes to mind when someone talks about intarsia is a form of knitting. Intarsia is a technique of using solid coloured threads to create blocks of colours to create interesting patterns.
Intarsia in the woodworking sense is not all that different. You cut shaped blocks from different coloured woods and fit them back together puzzle-fashion to create a picture or pleasing geometric shape.
You can see in my child violinist intarsia pattern that I have used the dramatic stripes of zebrawood to make the little girls overalls, purpleheart wood for her violin, ebony for her bow and basswood and pine for her skin tones. I think the shoes were paduak.. I hate to think that I have used less than 6 different exotic wood species in any one project.
The trick in intarsia, (the wood version) is to find the right wood shading and textural features to compliment the design. Often the most dramatic pieces are not commonly found in the wood for sale.
I remember one of the coolest woods i saw for intarsia was called Darina, from south america. The wood on the outside of the tree was VERY coarse looking and gray and black. It was absolutely PERFECT for the coarse hair on a wolf.
Problem was, in the wood trading arena this part of the tree was considered a defect and thus you rarely found it on the traditional lumber market. The most you might get would be a 2" strip down a plank.
The inside wood was a pretty plain beige and represented the marketable portion of the tree, so this is what was commonly available for purchase. It was OK, just not anything special if you were an intarsia artist.
Small peck marks and spalting lines in wood are often perfect for the striations on the breast of a bird, colour shifts from the heartwood to sapwood of walnut can be used effectively for shadows and curly wood can be used quite nicely for ripples in the water.
So scroll saw intarsia is the process of seeking out the weird and wonderful patterns in wood, cutting them on your saw into appropriately shaped pieces and putting them back together to create a pattern.
We are joining segments of various species of wood to make a whole.. and this leads to the name 'Segmentation'. A specialized form of scroll sawing. Intarsia is one form of segmentation.
The wood can be 3/4" thick and glued to a backing and hung on the wall as an independent piece of artwork, OR cut out of very thin material and appliqued (another quilting phrase :) ) onto box tops, mirror frames and children's high chairs. Veneers can be put together in the same way and it is referred to as marquetry. Only your imagination is necessary.
Segmentation cutting can also imply using your scroll saw to cut pieces of wood to form a puzzle, from an ancient chinese tangram to the traditional picture puzzles that you buy your kids every year for Christmas.
The common thread in all of these art forms of scroll saw intarsia and segmentation is that they all use the same tool (a scroll saw).
More Information:
Learn more, read our other scroll saw woodworking & craft information and articles on just about anything related to scrolling and woodworking in general.
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