Veneering bendable plywood

[Jay Jolliffe]

I have to make a radiused kick space under a cabinet & was wondering if any one has used the bendable plywood after it was veneered. I need to veneer it with Jarrah. Will it still bend the same being veneered on both sides?

[Ed Peters]

Can't imagine why you would veneer the back side of a kick space board. The normal rules of maintaining equalibrium do not apply in this situation.

Ed

[Richard Wolf]

No it won't bend. I use bendable ply for some of my curved staircases, once they are veneered, they are locked into position.

Richard

[Roger Everett]

I'm with Richard, bend it to your pc. then veneer.
Roger

[Jamie Buxton]

What do you mean when you say "bendable plywood"? There's several products which sometimes are called that, and they have different characteristics.

There's something my dealer calls "Italian bendling poplar". It is three-ply plywood, some metric equivalent to 1/8" thick. It bends very easily in one direction -- so easily that the easiest way to carry it home is to roll it up into a tube. I use it for bent laminations. I've found that it is much easier to first veneer what will be the show face, and then put the whole stack of laminates in the bending press. Doing the bent-lamination step first, and then veneering, gives you the problem of cleaning veneer tape off a curved surface. That can be done, but I find it is much more difficult than cleaning it off a flat surface.

[Jim Becker]

I'll "third" Richard on this. You need to do your bending/forming first and then veneer. A vacuum process would frequently be used for the veneer work with proper support and a formed caul, if concave work is needed. In general, veneering is done on both sides, but if you are using a solid structure to hold the bend in the plywood, it may not be necessary.

[Roger Everett]

After my post above, I got to rethinking this over, and if you just veneer the side that is the concave side and the bend isn't real tight, I feel you can bend it with out any problem. It's when you veneer on the convex side it won't bend very much, and if this a fixed pc. ( glued or firm attached to a frame and not real large { accross grain } ) I wouldn't bother veneering both sides.
Roger

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Apply veneer AFTER you have the bendy-ply in the shape and position you want & not before.

[Tony Bilello]

I used to do a lot of cold mold bending. Once you put the two pieces together - the ply and the veneer - they are now in tension with each other and dont want to move. This is the theory behind I-beams and torsion boxes. Basically, if the two are glued together, if you try to bend them, the plywood would have to compress on the inside face and the veneer would have to stretch on the outside face. But they cant because they are glued together and that would require that that slide apart.

Tony B

[Wright Woodall]

Let me start by saying that I have not worked with any bendable plywood or done any veneer work. However, i know that some bendable plywood is made by gluing the plies together with all the grain running the same direction as opposed to alternating the grain, which is what gives regular plywood its strength. So, in theory you could glue the veneer on before bending with its grain in the same direction as the plywood and it might still bend. That may not give you the look you want, and I would certainly test it out before doing very much of it, but its just a thought.

Wright