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Bought some nice looking large curly maple veneers at a very reasonable price thorough our woodworking club. Has some "ripples" in it. How do I get these flat? Thought of maybe a steam iron then clamp between two pieces of MDF but with wax paper between them or something like this? Never worked with veneer before. Randy
I have always relied on the laminating process to force the veneer flat. I use a press or cauls to hold the veneer flat until the glue drys. Vacuum techniques are intriguing. I have not tried laminating with vacuum. There are good threads about using vacuum in the archive here at SMC.
I have used an iron in conjunction with contact cement techniques and with hot melt techniques. I also have some veneer that I considered too wavy to use stashed away in the attic, pressed between MDF.
When I was making a table using crotch mahogany which also was wavy. I made mixture of alcohol and glycerin, which I can’t remember mix, but I would spray both side and let it soak in. Next I would sandwich veneer between news papers using several layers. I had couple pieces of 2’x2’ from solid core door as cauls that I would sandwich newspaper and veneer between cauls. I change out newspapers every couple days till it was dry.
From Joe Woodworker's website:
https://www.joewoodworker.com/veneering/flattening.htm
Hope it's OK to post this. But his website always is the first place I look to remember how to deal with veneer.
5 parts water and 2 parts vegetable glycerin. You can add a little yellow glue in the mix also but I don't like the idea of that personally. If you don't want to make your own, there's quite a few commercial products available but cost is quite a bit compared to homemade.
Forgot to mention, also use the sandwich method Carroll described above. Also forgot to mention 1 part alcohol. Lastly, you'll find a bunch of different homebrew formulas out there but they generally have the same ingredients.