Bandsawn veneers - bookmatch w/o drum sander?

[Matt Day]

I'm pretty excited that finally am getting consistent thicknesses on veneers with my 14" bandsaw. I installed a new Carter spring (the old one wouldn't get my 3/4" blade up to enough tension), accounted for blade drift, and built a new tall resaw fence. Lastly I threw together a roller setup to hold the top of the board flat against the fence (this is v1.0). It works quite well. With this setup I'm getting consistent 3/32" veneers - I got about 7 veneers out of a piece of 8" tall 4/4 piece of walnut.

My question is about the veneers, which has one side that was run through the planer and the other with some bandsaw blade marks. The walnut I cut isn't anything special, but I'd like to bookmatch the veneers. That means one of the veneers will have the bandsaw marks out. Without a drum sander, I'm not sure how to preceed. I'm sure it will get torn to shreads if I send it through my planer (non-helical head).

Should I glue them up and put them in the vacuum press as is, then simply go at it with my ROS to finish them up?

[Van Huskey]

As long as the thickness is pretty consistent I would apply them then clean them up as you suggest. Without a DS or WBS thats about the only option, well unless you are versed in scrapers which is what I would use but since you didn't mention them...

[Matt Day]

I'll give it a try with the scraper. I actually just got a honing guide for it from LV. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Matt Day]

Oh, and I'm assuming you're suggesting using a scraper after it's glued to a substrate, right? I'd be worried about cracking the veneer if I tried it on the veneer alone.

[keith micinski]

I took what he said to mean is do it once you have the veneer attached to the substrate. Which makes sense by the way. It sounds like it is time to start looking for a used 16-32 though if you are going to start making your own veneers.

[Doug Wolf]

Matt,
If you have a lathe and a length of 4" PVC then you're on your way to a drum sander.
Here are some pictures of one I made when I needed to surface some segmented rings for a turning I was making. I couldn't bring myself to buy a drum sander for this project. I turned a couple of plugs for the ends of the 4" PVC and built a table to support the Formica slide and wrapped some 1 1/2" sandpaper around the drum.

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[keith micinski]

I am not sure how the safety police are going to like this invention but I think it is great and am impressed by the ingenuity used to solve a problem.

[Doug Wolf]

You're right Keith, you definitely have to be careful to feed the work piece against the direction of the rotation or it will fly out at you. And it helps to have a big fan blowing the dust out of the shop. The lathe has since been disassembled for parts for other projects. If I had kept using it I would have built a dust hood over the top. But it worked great for the 17 white oak rings that were 14" in diameter that I had to surface.

[Neil Brooks]

Before I got my drum sander, I'd double-stick tape the veneers onto a bigger board, and just hit the veneer with my ROS -- usually using 180 or 220 grit.

I don't remember ever messing them up, and ... it sure is easy.

[Van Huskey]

Yes, I did mean glue to the substrate before attacking with a scraper!

[Jim Belair]

Matt, do you have any more photos of your set up? It's a bit hard to see the roller assembly (or figure out which is the roller assembly) in the one photo.

Seven sheets out of 4/4 is great!

Slick set up Doug.

Jim B

[Matt Day]

Jim,

Here are some camera phone photos with bad lighting :)

The two roller blade wheels are attached to some T-track, and the bolt allows the 2 wheels to be adjusted fore/aft of the blade. One thing I'll do is lengthen the holes that the T-bolts are in (you can see the heads of them protruding out below), and recess them so they are flush mount. This will allow for adjusting for the height of different boards (I only needed this jig for my 8" tall board I created it for, for now).
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This is the other area I'm sure I could improve and am open to suggestions, but it is still functional. The round knob is the first rough adjustment to take into account the thickness of the board - whether it be 12/4 or 1/2". The two flat knobs produce the tension from the wheels to the resawn board and old it tight. Have two is good too, because I can skew the tension so the wheels want to go away from the blade when the cut is just about done.
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[Matt Day]

Doug, I do have a lathe and I like your setup! I might have to try that one day when I have some more shop space to work with. Thanks for the idea.