Book match veneer by hand

[Sean Reilly]

Hi everyone,
Over the past year, after stumbling onto Tom Fidgen's website and books, I've been doing a lot more work with hand tools and loving it. I have a project coming up that I want to use all hand tools on (it's a small spice box). I needed a pair of book matched veneer for the door. I have a nice peace of walnut that I was planning to saw into veneer. The question I have is how to plane one side of such a thin peace of stock after it has been cut into veneer?

Say I have a board that has been planed on all four sides, I then saw a peace of veneer off. No problem I can glue it to the panel and plane the saw marks off. The problem comes when I want to saw a book matched peace. You see I can again plane all four sides of the board and saw another peace of veneer, but the side with the saw marks on it will be the side that needs to be glued down. So with such a thin peace, what's the best way to remove the saw marks? Remember I'm using only hand tools on this project.

One thing I thought of doing was using hide glue to glue the peach down to a board, plane the saw marks out, then use a heat gun to loosen the hide glue and remove the veneer. What do you all think?

[Glen Johnson]

You could laminate a three flat boards together. The middle board would be the same width was your veneer. The outside boards would be raised above the middle board and glued the thickness desired for the finished veneer, for example a sixteenth of an inch. You could then have a plane ride the outer boards with toe and heel of the plane on the opposite outer boards from each other. You would run the plane down this jig until it quits cutting. You would the have your veneer planed and a uniform thickness. You might try double sided tape at the top and bottom of the veneer to hold it in place. Alchohol can be used to get it to release after planing.

[Steve Voigt]

It really depends on how thick you want the veneer to be. If it's thicker than 1/16", I would just plane it up against a stop. Get a piece of MDF and glue a strip of your veneer down to make a stop. For thinner stuff, if you have difficulties, then yes, the hide glue idea will work, as will Spray 77. Double stick tape can work too, but I would want to cover virtually the entire surface underneath the panel--if you leave much space between the strips of tape, the panel will flex there.

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Sean

Andrew Crawford, whom I did a workshop with a few years back, shoots his edges with a sandpaper plane ..



Lee Valley offer one now (search their website).

Below are two shooting boards of Neil Erasmus, a local high end furniture maker. The one on the right is a reverse slop, which is used to shoot veneer. The reverse angle forces the veneer down when using a straight blade. I imagine that a skewed blade would do the same ..



Recently I needed to joint two bookmatched panels that were 1/4" thick. This is a lot thicker than your veneer, however the panels needed to be held very flat to match plane them. This is how it was done ...



Full article is here: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furniture/OneStepBack.html


Regards from Perth

Derek