veneer thickness

[Michael Conner]

I am planning the cabinets for our new house (that we hope to begin in the next few months). I have enough cherry lumber to make all of our cabinets, but I know that gluing up lumber to make 'sheet stock' for the ends of the cabinets will likely not produce a nice result over time.

This leaves me with a couple of options as I see it.

1. I can construct my casework out of plywood and then create floating panels to cover the end.

or

2. I can resaw my cherry and use this as a veneer over plywood.

Because I have the cherry, I would prefer not to purchase cherry ply.

My question regards option 2. I have never veneered anything and I am wondering how thick I could cut my veneers. It seems that if they are too thick, I might still get some warping in the ply. Would 1/8" veneers on both sides of 1/2 ply be likely to result in unstability of the plywood?

Is there anything else I should consider other than the 2 options above?

Thanks in advance.

[Jim Becker]

There is no harm in creating solid end-panels from your cherry stock as long as you mount them with wood movement in mind. That could easily be accomplish via screws from the interior of the end carcass into the cherry with fixed positions in the front and some slight slots toward the back so that the panel can expand toward the wall. You'll want to make sure that the panel has "somewhere to go" in that respect. And as to sizing the panel, what time of year relative to temp and humidity comes into play when you create it.

As to your veneer question, 1/8" veneer will be pretty forgiving and should work fine, too. Just do it both sides. You should still use cherry, but you can use the "not so nice" stuff for the inside veneer, such as stock with sapwood and defects. That over 1/2" or 1/4" plywood would make a very nice end panel.

[Jesse Cloud]

I agree with Jim. Good advice.

If you haven't cut veneer before, probably the main thing you want to think about is leaving some extra thickess for sanding. Its pretty hard to cut a wide piece to a precisely consistent thickness - so one side will probably be 1/64th or 1/32 thicker than the other side of each piece of veneer you cut. Maybe you won't have this issue, but most of us do... Anyhow, after you glue it to the plywood, you will need to sand it smooth - a wide belt sander is great here.

If you are using 1/4 ply, might be a good idea to try to make the grain of the veneer go 90 degrees to the grain of the last veneer on the ply.

Hope you will post some pics, sounds like a great project.

[Larry Fox]

Others have you covered on the veneer. However, another option for the end-panels is something like this which I did for the ends in my kitchen. I think it makes a nice job.

94992

[Michael Conner]

Thanks for all the responses. Larry, that is some nice looking work. That is what I had in mind in option 1. It does sound like I could pretty easily do the veneering. We have need of a bathroom vanity that I may use for practice.