Making Paper Marbling Tools (Combs & Rakes)

For Turkish marbling, the tools you'll need are a bit more 'refined' than the ones you might use for alternate paper marbling techniques. Turkish marbling uses water that has been thickened with carrageen, so the paint that sits atop it stay relatively still during the marbling process. Because of this, you can achieve fairly consistent and controlled results.

Since we have a Turkish marbling workshop quickly coming up at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center, I decided it would be much more cost-effective to make our own tools rather than buying them. We had some narrow (1.5") slats of wood laying around and many finishing nails (nails with very small heads).

Our marbling trays are for 11" x 14" sheets of paper, and it worked out very conveniently that our slats were 14 inches long, or slightly shorter. Using a ruler and marker, a dot was placed every inch across the middle of the slat until I reached the other end. On another slat, dots were marked, but this time in 2 inch intervals. After that, I made a template for the 'double rake' so two rows of dots were made on one slat - one row was along the top of this slat and the other row was located 3/4" below, and offset by 3/4" as well. The dots of each row were placed 1.5 inches away from each other. The double rake is used for popular designs such as the peacock.​

Once the marks were placed, I hammered 1.5" finishing nails into each mark. And that was that! Okay, it was kind of tricky making sure they all went in straight but afterward I eyeballed each one and gave them a light tap with the hammer to even out.

The one comb I did not even bother trying to make is one that literally uses 55 sharp sewing needles that are spaced 3/16 of an inch apart using hot glue to keep them in place. I noped out of there. These only cost $10.95 at Hollander's in Ann Arbor, Michigan - worth every penny if you ask me.

So that's it! We now own 3 sets of tools for French curl, non-pareil, git-gel, the peacock, and well - pretty much anything else you can imagine!