Solid wood vs. homemade veneers

[Tim Allaire]

I have some lumber that has been out for the past year and a half. My goal was to build a solid walnut desk. Because I do not have quite enough to complete my project, should I change my plans to a smaller desk or should I try to make my own veneers? First of all, I am not quite sure how to make veneers (thickness, lengths, never worked with them before-i.e. process). Secondly, any recommendation for wood to use if I use veneers(I am a teacher with limited fundage). Thanks.

Tim

[Chris Padilla]

Well, normally a bandsaw is a must for resawing your wood into thinner pieces of wood that you would use as a veneer.

Veneers are normally glued to some kind of a substrate like plywood or MDF.

Veneers are often placed in vacuum bags to provide good/even clamping pressure to ensure they adhere well to their substrate.

With veneering, you may need to worry about the edges of whatever you are veneering. In other words, you'll want to add hardwood of the same kind you veneered to the edge. Your goal, of course, is to make a board that looks like a solid piece of wood.

As you can see, veneering can get expensive with the need for a bandsaw, vacuum press and bags, and other items. Veneering is often done for working with the more exotic expensive woods or fancier-figured woods (birdseye/curly maple, walnut crotch, etc.).

You might be better off and it might actually be cheaper in the long-run to secure the extra walnut you need to complete your desk. Also, look into walnut plywood as a way to extend your solid walnut. I think these two options will be better for you over getting into veneering.

Good Luck! :)

[Jesse Cloud]

To make your own veneer you will need:

A good bandsaw with a very good blade
An excellent planer with sharp knives or a wide belt sander
A good long handplane and a sharp scraper for cleanup
Some thick (8/4) wood so you can get enough sheets to match attractively
A veneer press to apply it.
Lots of time and patience.

The good thing about making your own veneer is that you can make it much thicker than the commercial stuff. At the school I attend, we shoot for 3/32 sheets. That thickness can be edge glued, jointed, sanded, etc. You can get a lot of veneer from a little lumber. Save the straight grained parts for edge banding, use the figured parts for the faces.

[Dick Latshaw]

I was in a similar situation last summer. I had some 35 year old cherry boards and my daughter wanted night stands. Not enough wood to make them out of solid wood, so I went the band sawn veneer route. The only solid wood on these is the drawer fronts and the drawer boxes (of maple),

80346

I had some knowledge of what to do since I had attended David Finck's band sawn veneer one day workshop. Looking at the map, you are not that far from David's place. (I also see that you are really close to Wall Lumber - that is a good thing.)

To do it right and easily, you will need a decent band saw and a vacuum veneer press (visit joewoodworker.com to find out about all things vacuum). I did all of the clean up work on the veneered pieces with hand tools - planes and scrapers.

Good luck.

[Jim Becker]

"Thick" veneers (which is typically what most of us can produce in our own shops can work very well for leveraging scarce stock. And don't think that you need to apply them to a plywood or MDF substrate, either. In fact, for thick veneers, it may even be better to laminate them to a secondary wood that has similar seasonal wood movement characteristics or even less expensive "common" lumber of the same species. You do not need to do vacuum veneering for this kind of thing...you can use platens, cauls and clamps to do the laminations right on your workbench if need be, although a vacuum system does make things go very easily.

I started to work with veneering recently and have found it opening up a lot more opportunities for me to do some interesting things.