Bonding wood veneer to ? to solid.

[Perry Holbrook]

I'm working on a product idea and need a little creative/technical help. I have a piece of 4"x6"x1" hardwood (species not yet picked). I want to laminate a bright colored material to the top surface of the wood and then adhere a figured veneer to that material.

As an example, lets say I use walnut as the base, then a 1/8" layer of gold colored Corian, then a fancy burl veneer.

I want to v carve a design thru the veneer on top exposing the gold color. Then machine a 1/8" chamfer around the top, exposing a nice little gold highlight strip along the edge.

I have a few concerns. Flatness of the wood is critical. If I glue the Corian to the wood (with what adhesive), will the wood movement across the 4" width cause the lamination to fail? Will contact glue be OK for gluing the veneer to the Corian? Will this lamination cause the wood to bow or cup? If I spray a high solids lacquer, will the Corian be a problem?

I only mention Corian as an example. It's the only thing I can think of so far that I can machine like wood and comes in a variety of bright colors. I would also appreciate any other material ideas.

Thanks,
Perry

[johnny means]

Just yesterday I was spraying lacquer based primer on veneer that was adhered with contact cement. I had originally planned on using shellac primer, but had some lacquer primer laying around. I know better and realized what I had done immediately after the first pass was sprayed on. All I could do was watch in horror and wait for the veneer to bubble up, which it promptly did. Luckily, the project is a faux finished piece and perfection is not necessary. After the primer dried I was able roll out the bubbles and the reactivated adhesive stuck just fine. If this had been a finer piece with clear lacquer it would have been ruined.

In short contact cement and lacquer, specifically the lacquer thinner in lacquer, don't mix.

[Bill Huber]

Could you not dye, say some hard maple in a bright color and they you would not have to worry about and thing but wood.

[Perry Holbrook]

The dye would need to completely color the wood. It just may work as long as I hold the thickness to 1/8". Color fastness would also be important. Might be worth a try. This is a component for a very high end high quality product.

Forgot about the lacquer solvent and contact cement, duh.

Perry

[David Thompson 27577]

If you veneer the top surface, you'll need to veneer the bottom surface as well. If not, you'll get uneven moisture absorption, and resulting warps.

[Perry Holbrook]

That's why I was thinking of Corian against the solid wood and then veneer on top of that. Would the Corian be a vapor barrier for both the soilid and veneer thereby eliminating the moisture absorption problem? I can't veneer the bottom of the solid piece for several reasons to do with the overall design.

Perry

[John TenEyck]

Conventional wisdom says you must follow the same schedule on both sides of your substrate, so if you put corian and veneer on one side, you must do so on the other as well to keep it in balance. I've broken that rule several times with no adverse effects. Your substrate is so small and so thick in relation to its width that I think you could do as you propose, one side only, with no warpage due to moisture. Why not make up a specimen and see?

[Perry Holbrook]

Making a specimen is of course the thing to do. I'm just starting this design, looking at several possibilities, and wanted to check my thinking with the masses before I got too far down a difficult path. Available time for trial and error is very limited.

Perry

[Chris Padilla]

If you have some control of your depth of cut, you could laminate up several layers of whatever you want...on MDF.

MDF is very stable, very flat, and very cheap and fantastic for laminating to. I dunno if it would work for your situation, however, but I think you have gotten good advice. I would use plastic resin glue over any PVA. PRG dries very hard whereas PVAs tend to remain flexible. I also agree with John: the overall piece is too small to worry about movement and balance, etc.

[David Thompson 27577]

............................ Would the Corian be a vapor barrier for both the soilid and veneer thereby eliminating the moisture absorption problem? ..........................

No, but that's not the point. You're planing to have one 4X6" surface of the substrate be completely impregnable -- it'll be covered with plastic. And the other 4X6 surface will be completely open to moisture changes. I'm pretty sure that I would not even do this with quartersawn wood. And if your stock is riftsawn, it will (IMO) end up being rift-warped.

[john bateman]

Instead of corian, use 1/8" thick maple. After the 3 layers are glued up, spray some thin coats of laquer to seal the walnut.
Route your design, then apply dye, or even gold paint for that matter. Then sand the walnut on a flat sanding board to remove the lacquer.
That should leave the maple with a gold appearance and the walnut in it's natural state.

[Howard Acheson]

What you describe is likely not to work. The solid material--whether Corian, plastic laminate or other similar material--will cause the solid wood to warp. It does not matter what adhesive you use. Beside being inflexible, it is also impervious to the passage of air. This means that the wood bottom will always be at a different moisture content.

You might be able to laminate a solid impervious material to the bottom to keep the two surfaces of wood at the same moisture content. For an adhesive, you will need to use contact cement. I strongly recommend that you use solvent based contact cement. Of course, the walnut will always want to expand and contract with changes in relative humidity. Go to the Shrinkulator at: www.woodbin.com and calculate the amount of expected wood movement. I think you will find that the wood movement of a board 4" wide will cause warping and/or splitting of any wood.

You should be able to laminate a veneer on top of the solid material using solvent based contact cement.

I would suggest you make up some prototypes and test them in different environments to see if you will have warping.

[Tony Bilello]

Johnny
I spray and everyone I know sprays lacquer on top of vaneer with contact cement as the veneer adhesive. I we have never had a problem. It might be the way you applied it. It would take an aweful lot of lacquer or primer/sealer to completely soak through the veneer enough to soften the contact cement enough to lose adhesion and bubble up. Try putting on lighter coats and see what happens. The problem may also be in the veneer itself.