Filling void under Veneered plywood

[Frank Krazz]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the proper forum but ...

I am building a coffee table that has a veneer plywood top with solid wood banding on it. When I was finish sanding it, I noticed the veneer was not sticking to the plywood and then discovered there was a void under the veneer. There are two of them approx. a 1/4" square.

The question is, how to fix it. I am thinking to cut the veneer, peel it back and adding wood fill. Might be messy. Also, maybe injecting epoxy or some non-shrinking filler in to the void through the veneer. Might be messy. I could just leave it and hope the finish stiffens it up.

Anybody actually done this? What did you do and how did it turn out?
Thanks,
Frank

[Brian Peters]

The finish won't stiffen it up but peeling it back and filling the voids with filler is your best bet. Injecting it sounds interesting and might work with a quick cure epoxy but I would just use filler. Make sure you clamp a piece of plywood or wood covering that surface area so the filler doesn't create a lump when you roll it back on. You could try epoxy its hard to say I would have to see it to make that call.

[Jamie Buxton]

You can buy syringes to use to inject glue into the void. The standard medical syringe has a sharp wedge tip so it can cut its own hole. The syringes in the woodworking stores often have blunt tips. You can sharpen them to make them work like the medical ones.

Use glue that doesn't have water in it, and doesn't foam up. Those both would cause a bubble. That pretty much means epoxy -- the water-thin kind, not the stuff with the texture of toothpaste. Inject enough epoxy to slightly over-fill the void. Then put something flat down on it, squeezing the excess out, to try to get the veneer back in the same plane as the rest of the plywood. The "something flat" should be something which isn't bonded by epoxy. The plastic from a grocery bag, wrapped around a block of wood, works.

Another approach is to drill into the void from the back side. Again, use epoxy to fill. This leaves less clean-up issues on the show face. Of course, you must drill juuuuust deep enough to get into the void, but not go through the face veneer. The void often is the thickness of the first veneer below the face, and you can see how deep you need to drill by looking at the edge of the plywood.

[Dewey Torres]

Here is how I would do it!

http://www.joewoodworker.com/veneeri...eerdefects.htm

[Frank Krazz]

Thanks for all the info, great ideas.