This project will be my 1st attempt at a veneering. The style of the box will be rail / style / panel construction similar to the plant stand I made recently:
http://www.routerforums.com/show-n-t...html#post63379
As you can tell from the title of my post I’m not a veneer expert. This is the 1st time I’m touching veneer as a raw material. I’ve done some reading and viewing which makes me think, “I can do this!”… I hope some veneer experts will tag along and make criticisms and suggestions so we can all learn from my experience here.
Here is some of the stuff I’ve watched and read to get ready:
Jonathan Benson’s Podcast on Woodworking online:
http://www.woodworkingonline.com/200...ter-craftsman/
Marc Adam’s video on Wood Magazine’s site:
http://www.woodmagazine.com/wood/fil...layer&temp=yes
Furnitology Production’s video blog:
http://blip.tv/file/204224/ http://blip.tv/file/204723/
And the articles on Joe woodworker’s site:
http://www.joewoodworker.com/articles.htm
I also picked up the book “Veneering, a foundation course” by Mike Bulton:
http://www.amazon.com/Veneering-Foun...1292771&sr=8-1
Research is done, it’s time to get dirty.
I picked up 6 consecutive sheets of walnut burl from
www.veneersupplies.com. Now I know burls are not the easiest veneers to work with, but I’ll be keeping it simple for this box. The game plan is to match all 4 outsides of the box and all 4 insides. All the veneer edges will be hidden in the groves of the rails / stiles. But I will make things more complicated for the inside bottom panel as I plan to try a 4 way book match.
The overall size of the box will be half a cube at 8” x 8” x 4”. The rails and stiles will be made from ½” x ½” walnut sticks (provided by a fellow woodworker). The panel substraights are going to be made from 1/8” birch ply. This is left over from my model airplane days. It’s sold as “aircraft ply”. It's made with 5 layers and is finished VERY smooth. Here’s a good source for it:
http://www.nationalbalsa.com/
Here are the raw materials:
The 1st step is to cut the substraight material for the panels. I cut them about 1/16" smaller than they need to be to have a little wiggle room when assembling the box. I fix any tear out from my table saw with some wood filler. I don't think it would be an issue but I don't want the risk of telegraphing.
After some filling and sanding I have all the substraights ready to go:
Time to break out the veneer. Since I want all 4 box sides to look identical my 1st task is to line up the sheets with features rather than the edges.
For this I get out my old cork building board and stick a few t-pins through two features on the 4 veneer sheets. This should line up all 4 sheets pretty close to each other.
Once things are lined up I place one of the ply sides on top of the stack and start cutting with a #2 xacto.
As I start cutting I understand way they say burls are hard to work with (and why they are not recommended for beginners). Cutting this stuff is like working with thin peanut brittle that has rice krispies mixed into it. While cutting the the 3rd side I was a bit too aggressive and tore out a chunk from under the substraight. I might have been able to tape it up during glue up but I decided to move up and try another cut. This time I took lighter passes with the knife and it worked out well:
I wonder if a nicely sharpened veneer saw would work better for this stuff. One of those is in my future, but not for this project.
So one side is done for all 4 sides and they look pretty similar as far as features.
The edges are decent and they are not critical at this point since they will be well buried and hidden in the rails / stiles.
One panel has a hole about 1/8" in size that I'll patch up before glue up:
Tomorrow I cut the pieces for the other side and break out the glue!