Project One, Day One

This project will be a desk top organizer made up of Davey Board, book cloth and decorative paper. This is the mock up which will be used as the basis of a future design that will be made from faux leather paper. When I work with mock ups, I always use leftover materials rather than the materials that I am planning on using for the real project. I would rather ruin lesser quality materials than the more costly materials. The only time that this matters is when you have differences in your paper thicknesses or paper grain.

The goal of the first day is to get all of the pieces ready for assembly. The first step is to cut the Davey Board. This is a shot of the entire sheet. Only a portion of this sheet will be used for this project.

The entire sheet of Davey Board. The arrows annotate

the grain of the board.

The pieces that will be used for this project. The

markings in the left bottom corner indicate the

right angle (or squared-off corner).

After the boards have been cut and squared. The second step is to laminate one side of the Davey Board with the paper that will be the liner of the cylinders and box. The liner paper has to be applied because when the individual parts are assembled, you will not have the opportunity to line them. This is a scrap piece of decorative paper that I had.

The lining paper ready to be pasted to the Davey Board.

The finished board with the lining attached.

Because of the size of the board and paper and the thinness of the decorative paper, Rice starch paste was used to adhere the two together. This type of paste allows you the most working time and is less likely to tear your paper. Because of the added water content to the Davey Board, the board will tend to warp (even when placed under pressure). To compensate for the natural warping of the board. it is best to paste some type of paper to the reverse side to counteract the warping action. In this case, I pasted a piece of newsprint to the back side of the board.

The board pasted with newsprint on the reverse side.

The last step on the first day is to weight the board so that it will dry flat and, hopefully, not be warped. I don't think that you can ever get all of the warp out of the board. But you can still hand bend pieces that have a little bend to them.

The Davey Board under weight.

Tomorrow will feature Day Two of the project. Cutting, Assembling and Decorating the finished project.