Wood movement and veneer

[Jay Jolliffe]

I went to a furiture show at a school I went to three yrs ago. Someone made a beautiful side board out of figured maple. It had three drawers on top of each other. The drawers faces were about 7 to 8" tall maybe 20" wide. The person veneered the drawer fronts over the less figured maple drawer front. I learned that's not such a good Idea because of wood movement....So what do you think.

[Jamie Buxton]

Was the grain direction of the veneer the same as the substrate lumber? If so, why would there be an issue with expansion? Both the veneer and the substrate would be expanding and contracting in the same way.

[Frank Drew]

Jay,

Do you remember if the drawer front was veneered on both sides (front and back), which I'd consider best practice?

[Jay Jolliffe]

The direction was the same. So the drawer front say 3/4" thick is going to have the same movement as 1/42 veneer. I would think the substrate would move more being thicker with more moisture content.

[Chris Padilla]

The key here is a good hard drying veneer glue. The fact that the veneer and substrate are the same species should help immensely with any wood movement issues.

Usualy, veneer is applied to MDF or plywood but in this case, it should work out fine.

However, I've found that even a 1/16" of veneer can move enough to bow two laminated pieces of 5/8" MDF! In this case, only one side was veneered...but eventually the other side was veneered.