St Benno part 2

For the past week or so I've been using my old studio chair as a prop in my classes, and in between I kept it in my apartment. But that part of the semester is over, so I left it in the car after the last class. After work today I dropped by the Studio to bring the chair back. And as long as I was there, I figured I should finally continue work on the block begun at my presentation a week ago.

As I typically do, I cut the outer margin first, then moved on to the date at the top of the block. Very quickly I ran into a little problem. With plywood there is always the possibility that there are flaws or variations in one of the layers under the surface that can affect cutting and printing. Usually it's a small area, but I ran into a big one today- a long strip of empty space in the core wood, about 3/4" wide, running the whole vertical length of the block and under some visual elements that can't be moved. In the photo to the left, it's the light colored strip that starts above the 6 and goes down to past the bottom of the image. One thing that can vary from board to board is the thickness of the veneer over that core wood. Luckily in this case the veneer was thick. So at least I was able to still cut those areas above the flaw- instead of cutting all the way down to the inner core (the reddish wood), I just cut down as far as halfway through the veneer. Deep enough that it should be easy enough to ink, but with enough left that it shouldn't cave in. So far it worked for the date section, so I'm hoping it holds together for the rest of the block.