Wood Veneers
Producing wood veneers
The finest and rarest logs are sent to companies that produce veneer. The advantage to this practice is two fold. First, it provides the most financial gain to the owner of the log.[citation needed] Secondly, and of more importance to the woodworker, is this practice greatly expands the amount of usable wood. While a log used for solid lumber is cut into thick pieces, usually no less than 1 1/8 inches, veneers are cut as thin as 1/40 of an inch. Depending on the cutting process used by the veneer manufacture, very little wood is wasted by the saw blade thickness, known as the saw kerf. Therefore, the yield of a rare grain pattern or wood type is greatly increased, which in turn places less stress on the resource. Some maunfacturers even use a very wide knife to basically “slice off” the thin veneer pieces. In this way, none of the wood is wasted. The slices of veneer are always kept in the order in which they are cut from the tree, and are known as flitches.
Types of veneers
There are a few types of veneers available and each serves a purpose.
• A: Raw veneer has no backing on it and can be used with either side facing up. It is important to note that the two sides will appear different when a finish has been applied, due to the cell structure of the wood.
• B: Paper Backed veneer is as the name suggests, veneers that are backed with a paper. The advantage to this is it is available in large sizes, or sheets, as smaller pieces are joined together prior to adding the backing. This is helpful for users that do not wish to join smaller pieces of raw veneers together. This is also helpful when veneering curves and columns as the veneer is less likely to crack.
• C: Phenolic Backed veneer is less common and is used for composite, or man made wood veneers. Due to concern for the natural resource, this is becoming more popular. It too has the advantage of being available in sheets, and is also less likely to crack when being used on curves.
• D: Laid Up veneer is raw veneer, which has been joined together to make larger pieces. The process is time consuming and requires great care, but is not difficult, and requires no expensive tools or machinery. Veneers can be ordered through some companies already laid up to any size, shape or design.
Patterns
There are a number of “patterns” common to veneered work. This refers to the way the veneers are laid up.
• A: Book Matched: where the veneers are opened from the flitch much like the pages of a book.
• B: Slip Matched: where the pieces are joined together in the order they come from the flitch, and have the same face kept up.
• C: Radial Matched: where the veneer is cut into wedge shaped pieces and joined together.
• D: Diamond Matched: where the pattern formed is diamond shaped.
Advantages of using veneers
In addition to the obvious savings of our natural resources, many projects built using wood veneer would not be possible to construct using solid lumber. Due to expansion and contraction common to all wood products and caused by changes in humidity, many of the patterns and designs possible with veneers would self destruct, if attempted with solid lumber. The limitless designs done with marquetry and parquetry would also be impossible.