Workshops: Band-sawn Veneers

I spent the day this past Friday with Mr. Chuck Howerton from over by Knoxville, TN delving into the topic of Band-sawn Veneers.  That’s using the band-saw to to cut your own veneers from solid timber. Chuck is smoothing a back-panel he put together from veneers he cut from a board of curly maple earlier in the day.

We started by chatting about design aspects of using veneers, cores and glues and the use of internal and external edge gluings.  The we spent some time discussing tuning up band-saws and choice of blades. From there, I demonstrated setting up and sawing veneers and then Chuck got in and sawed some of his own. It was challenging!  His panel is made from cut down veneers, but we did not want to cross-cut his plank so he was sawing veneers that were 7″ wide and 40″ long in hard maple.  That is no easy task  when the goal is to get consecutive slices of wood that are a uniform 3/32″ thick, but he was up to the challenge. Then came edge gluing the veneers, preparing the panels for pressing and gluing the veneers to the core with  a vacuum press.  And finally, as pictured, cleaning up the panel.

I was able to support Chuck’s instruction with a veneering project I was working on myself — replacing a bathroom vanity in the “shop” bathroom. It has a veneered side and doors as well as the top, all done in pine and cherry.  Here are some of the pine veneers waiting to be edge-joined.

And a door panel with an edge gluing applied and leveled prior to veneering it.

Until next time
df