I'm making a veneer top for a desk, 6'6 by 4' in a sunburst. I've cut the wedges with a veneer saw and now I have 15 rough pieces to tape together. Not sure what the best way of smoothing the edges is, given the fragile points. Any suggestions?
I'm making a veneer top for a desk, 6'6 by 4' in a sunburst. I've cut the wedges with a veneer saw and now I have 15 rough pieces to tape together. Not sure what the best way of smoothing the edges is, given the fragile points. Any suggestions?
Put a sun at the center of your sunburst.
Seriously, put some sort of feature in the middle of the sunburst -- a round disk, a pentadecagon, whatever. This avoids thin fragile points on the veneer wedges. I'd make it from some contrasting stuff like burl. Or stone, like the crushed semiprecious minerals that turners use.
I always put the 2 mating pieces (with mating sides out) between 2 pieces of MDF or plywood. Align the edges and lightly sand with 220 sandpaper attached( I use self adhesive sandpaper on this) to a long flat piece of MDF. Do this process on each pair of mating edges. It is a slow process to get the edges perfect.....but possible.
And if/when that fails, I go to Jamie's idea (if that wasn't part of the original idea) of adding an accent to the middle if the points break off. A lot depends on the type of wood veneer and how fragile the wood is when you're sanding it.
Hope this conveys the idea.
Jim
Last edited by Jim Tobias; 08-14-2019 at 12:09 PM. Reason: Additional explanation