I am currently working on a Sapele' bar, which is phase II. Phase I was the Maple theater. In the bar area there is a wall that connects to the theater. It has a pass through hole in it that needs a sliding door. Small door, cabinet door size.
I have made other doors that had different species glued back to back and they never seem to fair well. The different expansion rates between the joint of the wood causes the door to eventually change shape and get a bend in it, warp it.
So this time I chose to make a stave core door. The core being MDF.
Started off by taking a Maple board and a Sapele' board and gluing them together edge to edge. Then ripped them so there was 3/8" of each by 15/16" wide.
Then I took multi strip and sandwiched it between two MDF edges and glued them together.
After they dried I cut them in half leaving 5/16" of solid wood and the rest MDF.
That forms the inside edge of the door, the outside is just going to be Maple, so I cut the MDF so when the glue up is cut to size I will have 1/4" of both Maple and the Maple/Sapele' solid on each 2 3/8" slab.
That is what I got done on this today. Tomorrow I will make some 1/8" veneers out of the Maple and Sapele' and glue them on the front and back completing the stave core.
OK, I unclamped the pcs and ran them through the widebelt to get them around 11/16" thick. Then I cut them apart.
The I took some solid stock, some nice looking pcs, and cut my veneers from them. I just set the fence at 1/8" and ran the 2 9/16" stock vertically up against my fence, Jointed the face and did it again. This gave me two pcs of veneer, one for each face of the stiles and rails.
Then I needed to glue the veneers onto the stave cores. This will bring my total thickness of the staves to 15/16", which is thicker than I want for the final product.