Patterns: Simple shapes with changing grain orientation make beautiful panels.
Cutting Veneers
Use a sharp knife against a steel straightedge.
To crosscut, press hard for one or two passes, then snap the veneer by lifting it against the straightedge.
To cut with the grain, press lightly and make multiple passes.
Tight side, loose side. The veneer curls more easily with the loose side out (left). When possible, glue the loose side down.
Shooting the Edges
A shooting board keeps the bench plane at right angles to the face of the veneer, producing a clean, straight edge.
To get the same result with a trim router, make a simple fixture to trap the veneers and guide the machine.
Glue veneers by stretching tape across the joint line, then tape along it and fold the seam open.
Run a thread of glue on the edges.
Refold the joint, scrape off the excess glue, and tape the other side.
To repair a crack in your veneer, simply smear a little glue in it and tape until dry.
Veneer press: Curved battens transmit pressure from the center outward. To make the battens curve, tape two pieces of veneer about one third the length of the batten to the center of each one. Screw the battens to the particle board cauls, and protect the veneers with smooth, waxed Masonite platens.
Spread a uniform layer of glue with a 3" paint roller. Spread the glue on the substrate, not on the veneer, then lay the veneer in it.
Assemble the press, platens and panel on a couple of sawhorses, so you’ll have lots of room for clamps.
Tighten the clamps in pairs, working from the center outward.
When the glue has dried, clean-up is easy: rout the excess veneer flush with the substrate and sand smooth.

Veneer makes the most of the rarest and most beautiful woods. Veneers are thin and delicate, so working with them takes a bit more care than working with solid wood, but it’s not all that difficult. If you’ve wanted to try your hand at veneering but didn’t know where to begin, make a veneered panel like the tabletop shown above. It won’t take a lot of time or money, and it’s easy to construct the press you’ll need. Best of all, you won’t have to buy any new tools. Once you’ve laid up a successful panel, you can use it to build a cabinet door or a box, or a small table like mine — a knockout project that’s sure to please.

Why Veneer

Veneer is an ancient and honorable material, long used for the finest furniture and interiors. While the tools you use have a lot in common with those for solid wood, the results offer at least three distinct advantages.

Aesthetic advantage: A clear log yields thirty square feet of veneer to every board foot of solid wood. This is why the best logs go to the veneer mills, giving you access to the rarest and most beautiful material in the world of wood.

Technical advantage: With modern glue and substrates, a correctly veneered panel is dimensionally stable. You can forget about wood movement.

Design advantage: Because veneered panels don’t shrink or expand, they’re structural. You can glue them right into your project, and you can join other subassemblies directly to them.

Veneer Patterns

Veneer slicers begin by sawing the log in two lengthwise, then they soften the wood fibers with hot water and steam. They mount the half-log in a heavy frame that swings it up and down at a frightening rate, against a huge, stationary knife. The veneers slice off the log like shavings from a plane. Successive slices from the same log allow you to make near-perfect matches.



The little table shown above features straight grained, tiger-stripe anigre veneer. The top is dramatic because of the way light plays on wood figure. Simply cutting the veneer into squares and arranging them like a checkerboard produces the effect. The diagrams at the top of the next page show a few more of the many possible patterns you can make using straight-grained veneers.

Tight Side, Loose Side

When you look closely at a piece of veneer, you’ll see how like a plane shaving it is. One side is rougher than the other, and the veneer curls more easily with the rough side out. The smooth side is called the tight side, while the rough side is called the loose side. The tight side is covered with tiny compression cracks; the loose side has tension cracks. Usually you can sense which side is which by looking at both: the shiny, smooth-looking side is the tight side. Your pattern may not permit it, but whenever possible, glue the loose side down, leaving the tight side facing up for finishing.

Glue and Substrate

All veneered panels consist of five elements: face veneer, glue line, substrate, glue line, and balance veneer. The substrate has to be strong, dimensionally stable and flat. Our ancestors went to a lot of trouble to glue up suitable substrates, but we can buy them ready-made: industrial particleboard and medium-density fiberboard (MDF). Particleboard has a bad reputation because it’s manufactured in two forms, structural and industrial, and woodworkers often end up with the wrong one. Structural particleboard is for building houses; industrial board is for furniture and interiors. It’s easy to tell the difference: industrial board comes in sheets one inch larger than the standard 4x8.

You don’t need exotic glues to do the job. You’ll get excellent results with regular yellow or white glue, spread with an ordinary 3" roller for painting trim. Hide glue was the first glue used, but it’s a lot of trouble and it can make a big mess. Contact cement is not recommended for the small shop. Industry can control the formula and spread, but you can’t — lumps, glue voids, and finish solvent interactions are all but inevitable.

For dimensional stability, you must always glue veneer onto both sides of a panel. The balance veneer doesn’t have to be the same species or thickness as the face veneers, and its grain doesn’t have to run in the same direction. It’s the glue line that balances the panel, not the veneer itself, so it just has to be there.

Cutting Veneer

The key to success with veneers is cutting clean, straight edges. While there are special tools for the job, you can get perfect results with a sharp knife and a straightedge on a smooth surface. I use a Swiss Army knife against the back edge of my straightedge, on a sheet of tempered Masonite with a square grid drawn on it. Get in the habit of using the back edge of your straightedge for cutting; otherwise you’ll risk shaving and destroying the front edge.

Cut the veneer to the dimension of the substrate plus an inch, giving you a half inch overhang all ’round. To crosscut, set the straightedge in place, hold it tight, and take a firm pass with the knife. Chop down extra hard for the last half-inch of the cut, to prevent splintering there. Then make a second firm pass with the knife. If the veneer doesn’t separate, lift the free end while you hold the straightedge in firmly place. It will snap across the knife line.

To cut veneers lengthwise, make a series of light passes with the knife. Concentrate on keeping the knife against the straightedge, so it doesn’t wander in the grain.

Shooting Edges

Once cut to size, pieces of veneer have to be glued together edge to edge, a micro butt joint, just like a full-size joint in solid wood. Knifemade crosscuts will be clean enough to join without further preparation, but you will have to shoot long-grain edges — that is, plane or rout them straight and square with the aid of a shop-made shooting board. The photos at right show the hand and machine versions of the setup.

Joining Veneers

Instead of pipe clamps, close the joint with masking tape. The blue kind that painters use is strong enough and can be removed without tearing the veneer or leaving a residue. Press a piece of tape onto the first veneer, then pull the tape to butt the two pieces together, stretch it across the joint line, and press it onto the second veneer. With one side taped, fold the joint so you can spread a fine thread of glue on the mating edges, then close it, scrape and wipe the excess glue off, and tape the other side. Let the glue dry for a couple of hours before you carefully remove the tape. In a complex assembly, don’t try to glue more than one joint at a time. That way you can adjust each pair of edges before gluing it to the next, so the whole panel comes out as close to perfect as you can make it.

You’ll probably have to deal with a few stray cracks and tears. Make sure the broken pieces will fit together neatly, then glue and tape them as if they were a regular joint.

Building a Veneer Press

The secret to veneering is applying uniform pressure. In professional shops, vacuum bag presses have replaced the old-style veneer press. In the home shop, you can make a simple press using clamps, two particleboard cauls and two waxed Masonite platens. A set of wooden battens top and bottom transmit the clamping pressure to the cauls, platens and veneers. The setup is designed so that as you tighten each pair of clamps, the pressure builds from the center out to the edges of the panel.

The battens apply center squeeze by being curved, but you don’t actually have to shape them. All you have to do is tape two pieces of veneer in the center of each batten. For my 18" battens the veneer strips are 7" long. Then fasten the battens to the cauls with a single centered screw into each one, carefully countersunk.

If you don’t curve the battens, the press will squeeze the edges of the panel ahead of the center. This will drift the glue toward the middle, forming a thick pad. The excess glue then will soak into the veneer, causing it to expand and corrugate. Once dry, the resulting mess, in woodworking parlance, is called washboarding. In the best of pressings, some glue is likely to seep through the veneers. That’s why the platens have to be waxed.

Gluing the Veneer

The veneered panel is a sandwich, and like a sandwich, it goes together all at once. When you’ve cut and joined the face and balance veneers, you’re ready to glue up. First, however, align the veneers on the substrate to make sure you know where they go. In most cases, a center line or center cross is all you need for a layout line, but be sure to extend the marks onto the edge of the substrate so you’ll always know where you are.

The sequence is easy when you spread the glue with a small paint roller. Roll glue onto one side of the substrate, position the balance veneer and hand-press it into the glue, flip the panel over, roll glue onto the other side, and position the show veneer. Then pop the panel into the press. Always spread glue on the substrate, not on the veneer itself. It will transfer just fine when you apply pressure. If you try to roll it onto the veneer as well, the thin material will curl as well, the thin material will curl up and you will lose control.

Roll the glue to a uniform and even layer. It’s difficult to say exactly how much glue — too much and it’s liable to soak through (you will be able to sand it off); not enough and you will have pockets of glue starvation, where the veneer doesn’t adhere. When you get it right, you’ll see little beads of squeeze-out as you press the panel. Leave the panel in the press overnight to dry thoroughly.

Cleaning Up

The first step in cleaning up is to remove the veneer that overhangs the substrate. Do it with a trim router and a straight bit that has a ball-bearing pilot on the bottom end. Guide the bearing along the edge of the substrate. Then sand the surface smooth. If you’ve got a lot of glue squeeze-through, you might have to start with 100-grit paper, but don’t forget that you’ve only got 1/32" to play with.

Making the Table

The panel I made in the photos is anigre face veneer, with Macassar ebony for the back, on an 18" square of 5/8" industrial particle board. I made the table legs and rails from 11/16" thick Honduras mahogany. The legs are right angles made by joining two pieces that have been ripped at 45° on one edge. I make this cut with a simple jig on the table saw. The jig is a sled that holds the wood at 45°; it’s guided by the rip fence. This allows me to leave the saw blade upright and make a safe and accurate cut.

In solid wood the legs and rails would be structural, while the top would have to float so the wood could expand and contract. In this table, the veneered panel is what holds the structure together. First I glued the rails to the top using 1/8" splines centered on the edges of the panel. Then I cut out the corners to accept the legs, which were screwed into a corner block. The cover strip beefs up the visual weight of the legs and also conceals the screw heads. You could leave the rails and legs slightly proud and radius the edges, or you could make them flush. I chose to soften the top edge of the rail with a slight curve. The finish is a mixture of beeswax and oil.