Veneer progress and a question

[Phil Mueller]

I’m liking the possibilities with veneer and have just started to try working with it. I posted a box lid earlier that I did with redwood burl...turned out ok. My next “practice piece” started out with 1/2” walnut and 1/2” birch plywood. The 1/2” walnut is just proud of the 1/2” plywood...just enough to add veneer. So I framed the plywood with the walnut and tried a cold press method with a piece of ambrosia maple.

Then I decided to dress up the seam with stringing. Used a veritas router plane with the inlay cutters and then the 1/16” iron. The purchased stringing I had worked pretty well. I still need to work on fixing veneer holes and a couple of the stringing corners are a tiny bit off, but pretty happy with the result.

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Ok, so the question is this. I’m going to go one step further on the opposite side which has been sanded flat. I want to do a center field of the ambrosia maple and a border of some quilted walnut veneer. One video I watched, the presenter first glued down the center field. Then made and glued down the border. Is there any reason not to create the entire piece (held together with veneer tape) and glue it down as one assembly?

Thanks!

[Mike Henderson]

I use, and teach, the method of doing the entire piece, holding everything together with veneer tape, and then gluing it down all at once. Here's a tutorial on what I do.

Mike

[Phil Mueller]

Thanks Mike!