Have you/How would you veneer tapered legs???

[joseph j shields]

So it's a new year & my wife wants me to build her a special table.

The overall design will be that of shaker hall table.... with tapered legs.

No sweat thus far :)

Now comes the tricky part.... she wants the legs to be made from zebra wood. I can't afford to buy 8/4 zebra wood but I do have some nice zebra wood veneer. And that is my mission... to veneer 4 tapered legs :rolleyes:

I have a vacuum bag press.... but have only used it to veneer flat goods using 3/4" wooden platens (i.e door panels)

Sooooo I have a few questions:



Have you ever veneered tapered table legs?? If yes, how did you do it.
Would base wood should I use?? I was thinking maple.
Should I use my vacuum press (with or without wooden platens) OR use the dried glue & iron trick
I have to deal with the tapered legs.... any ideas???
Any other ideas?????


Thanks!!!!

-jj

[Mike Henderson]

I hope these are square tapered legs and not round tapered legs.

If square, I'd veneer one side at a time (or maybe two opposite sides at one time). You can overlap the veneer and then trim it with a trim router. Then veneer the other two faces and trim the veneer on those. Before applying the veneer, you want to cut the veneer so that it overlaps about 1/8" on each side. Use blue tape to hold it in place while you get it into the bag - be careful it doesn't shift.

If you want to get really interesting, you could bookmatch the two outside sides (the outside edge). That will be a challenge but if you work it you should be able to get pretty close. You might even be able to bookmatch, at least, two other edges.

Not an easy job but doable.

Mike

In a vacuum bag, you'd do this the same as any other glue up. Make two cauls and put the cauls over the veneer (with plastic between the veneer and the cauls) and then put that into your bag. The bag will conform to the shape.

[joseph j shields]

Thanks Mike.... Have you done this before????

Yes, they are square tapered legs.

YES... I was thinking about book matching... I think it could look quite nice.

[Mike Henderson]

No, never done legs but have done similar things. One problem is that you can't round the arris where the two pieces of veneer meet. If you want to do that, you'll need thicker veneer, which means you'll have to resaw some zebra wood.

Mike

[Alan Lightstone]

I've done it with shop sawn veneers with sapele (started at 1/8" then drum sanded down all four sides as I wanted to have face grain on all four sides of a drafting table).

Came out beautiful. For whatever reason now escapes me, I didn't use vacuum bag for the veneers, I just used clamps and cauls. Not sure that helps you, as you don't want the expense of the 8/5 zebra wood.

I got around the edge issue with chamfers. With thicker veneer, the lines hide quite nicely. A trim router should do the same with commercial veneers, just a different approach.

Mine was a lot more substantial legs than tapered ones, so I had more latitude. Yours would be a more delicate task.

[Steve Rost]

+1 what Mike and Alan said. Please do a lot of thinking how you will attach the legs to the apron. Do not want any gaps on your coverage that might show.

[joseph j shields]

Alan,

Nice work!!

Since I will have a taper on the legs.... I don't think 1/8" strips would work :-(

-jj

[brian c miller]

What if you veneered the legs then used some typw of bandaing (like in a guitar) to hide the edges.

It might be a nice contrast?

[Jim Tobias]

Joseph,
I don't think you should have problems veneering the 4 faces of a tapered leg. It seems to me the only issue would be the cauls matching the taper to get even pressure along the taper. If you are vacuum pressing be sure to tape it all (leg, veneer and cauls) together so the veneer won't slip in the bag.
I recently veneered the side of some curved laminated legs using just cauls, clamps and commercial veneer. The sides of these legs were flat in the veneering plane, but as long as your taper is flat(not curved), I would think you could also do it that way.

Jim

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