Weekend Woodshop

 Weekend Woodshop ~Hans Boecher

Duty called and I served 24 years in the military. After retiring in 1992, I had an interest in woodwork so I started experimenting — furniture, painted wood, lighthouses, windmills, etc. I was reading a magazine about wood one day and ran across an article about intarsia. Intarsia is a thirteenth-century Italian art form consisting of mosaic pictures in wood. I decided to try my hand at this art form and before long I was hooked. In the beginning, it was more of a hobby. I made various pieces of intarsia and gave them away to family and friends. After a while, I began receiving phone calls from people who had seen my work and the idea began to form that I could sell my product. In 1998, I embarked on the art and craft show market and the rest is history!

I use hard and soft wood (i.e. walnut, mahogany, cherry, pine, beech, holly, ash – to name a few) and exotic wood from Africa and South America. Some pictures have over 300 pieces. Each piece is carefully cut with a scroll saw and then sanded which gives the item a 3 dimensional effect. An outline of the project is cut using plywood and the various pieces are glued together and then sprayed with 3 coats of polyurethane.

Most of my Intarsia pieces have an animal, nautical, or wildlife theme. I have also expanded my craft to include a ship's wheel table with an intarsia theme. I also make wooden banks and pens and lately, I have only been making pens and small items that I can turn on the lathe