Need help with a parquet tray

[Papa Jim]

I tried to attach a pic, but got a "file is too big" message and my computer skills don't include reducing the file size of a photo.

Anyway, the parquet piece in question is approx 13" x 17" x 1/4" thick and consists of approx 370 diamond shaped pieces of various types of wood. It will be the tray bottom, supported by 3/16 ply on the bottom. I have two questions:

1. What to use to fill the cracks where my joinery skills were not up to the task. Not too many, but I'm particuarly concerned about cracks between the light colored (mostly pink) pieces. Super glue, epoxy, lots of varnish, or something else? What has worked for you in the past?

2. How to fasten the parquet to the plywood? The parquet will be sandwiched beteen the dado in the tray sides and the ply.  I will drill oversized holes in the parquet to allow for movement. First I thought of just tite bond, then contact cement, then silicone, then finally --since it is going to be secured completely around the edges--why not just a dab of tite bond in the center?

I toyed around with sandwiching it between the ply and a piece of acrylic but I think that would make too big a sandwich and I hate covering wood up.

Finally, if someone wants to take the time to teach me how to resize them, I'll post some pics.

Papa Jim

[chips ahoy]

Jim
Give this a try
Go to pic and open it,then right click on it
go to edit, go to resize, erase 100 and put in 25
Go to file at top left corner and click on it,hit save

You should be good to go. Hope this works for you, just learned it myself. If you have any questions, please asl.

Mel

[p_toad]

If that doesn't work for you, there's a program called Irfanview (which may be freely used) which can do the resizing for you.   If you need a tutorial i would probably put one together for you.

[chips ahoy]

p_toad
Go ahead and give it to him,probably easier than my way.

Mel

[Papa Jim]

I actually managed to get it resized.

   

[chips ahoy]

Congratulations on the resizing Jim, that is a beautiful job on that tray.

Mel

[Papa Jim]

I tried the old sawdust and poly trick, and also sawdust and super glue on the back side. Both dried darker than the background wood. What finally worked was I used a pallet knife to force the sawdust into the offending cracks and then sprayed on two light coats of rattle can poly. Why that dried lighter than the mixture I couldn't say. I'm just glad it did.  Like all woodworkers I'm more critical of minor imperfections than anyone else.

Papa Jim

[joe1086]

Nice work.

[p_toad]

you must be looking at it up close and personal.   I don't see anything wrong with it at all...nice tray! 

[TomFromStLouis]

I have not found any satisfactory gap filling technique other than inserting thin slivers of wood (with glue).