The beauty of veneering
Veneering offers the ability to create free flowing forms with ease. It provides great strength when layered as a ply and allows us to make shapes such as these handles that are not suited to solid timber construction. I experimented with carving the handles but couldn’t overcome the weakness posed by short grain. Veneer offered more integrity; I could create thin curves, only 4mm thick that were stronger than a 10mm thick carved equivalent.
Preparing stock
For this project I used cherry and birdseye maple.
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Preparing the veneer
Lay out your veneer and select the pieces to be used, considering the grain orientation and selecting the best pieces for the face side of the doors and carcass components. Prepared veneers have a face side and a back side. Hold the veneer up to the light and flex it slightly. You will see that where it has been sliced, the face side has a raised grain and the other has a pitted grain. If you are book-matching the doors, you can use the back side as the face but be careful not to catch the grain when cleaning up.
When you have selected your veneer pieces, lay your oversize components onto the veneer and mark around them.

Read more in the June/July 2010 issue of The Shed