Applying wood veneer?

[Zach]

Hi guys...

I'm wondering about applying wood veneer to cabinets. Anyone had some success with the 3mm/1/8th inch stuff? I'm wanting to build a set of fancy shmancy curved "wood" cabinets. No plastic laminate wood grain, but the real stuff.

How'd ya do it? Big honking clamps, vacuum bagging, finish nails? I'm looking for the shove over the edge to make a wood interior for pylasteki instead of lots of white formica.

The general sense I get is that its real easy to screw it up, but that might just be the cabinet guys trying to keep their cost up. (Grin)

Thanks...

[Hirilondë]

Not sure I understand the question(s). Are you applying it to existing cabinets? Or making new ones? I never heard of 3mm or 1/8" veneers, way too thick. I have used 3mm okoume plywood. I resurfaced my bulkheads with it, but that process isn't what I would use for cabinets. I need more clarification to offer any thoughts or ideas.

[Zach]

Dave,

Oops, I was thinking about the thickness of single plys for making the fiddle rails.*

I'm making new cabinets.

I'm building a mold for my cabinets with a nice radius curve. (4 inch pvc pipe as part of the plug)

I figure I can build a mold thats 24 inches wide to have enough width on each side to trim off 2-4 inches to fit through the companionway for installation and future removal for maintenance. Then with the mold, pop 4 cabinets out, left side or right and trim them to fit. Symmetrical... but made of frozen snot. I'd like to end up with matching wood grains, curves that would be a pain to replicate, and mile deep clear coat over them like the inside of Hatteras boats.

(*For the fiddle rails curve, I'm pondering dropping a few hunks of mahogany on a CNC mill, or laminating them out of the same veneer on the cabinets and staining them/tinting the resin a different color.)

Probably the hard way to do things, but my garage is 250 miles from the boat... so "trim to fit" makes sense. Do 80% of the work here, fit, and bring back home and do the finish work... then bolt in the next trip.

Thanks for your thoughts,

Zach

[Rachel]

In addition to the info you get here, have you seen the thread by a fellow named Tony on the Ariel forum? He's made curved cabinets for his boat, and they look pretty darned neat. I guess I can't paste in a photo from there to here, but the first link will take you to page 17 of the thread, where you can see them in the boat. The second link leads to page 10, where he starts to talk/show about making the curved wood.

http://www.pearsonariel.org/discussion/ ... 46&page=13

http://www.pearsonariel.org/discussion/ ... 46&page=17

[Zach]

Hey Rachel,

Yup. Tony's boat is actually one of many that has crawled inside my brain and taken up residence. His work looks great. Mainly though, I love that theres nothing pointed to fall against in that interior. Thanks for the link to the how too... I forgot that he went into detail, only the curvy interior thats seared into my brain remained. (Grin)

If I had a dollar for every time I banged the bruise on my thigh on that pointy galley counter beside the sink from climbing through the hatch... (Grin)

[Rachel]

I know exactly what you mean. After passages I always had bruises in just the places where I'd hit the corners (they were rounded but not that rounded) on the nav station and the galley. His cabinets should take care of that. I can't wait to see them done and with fiddles and all.

[Hirilondë]

It sounds like you are going to mold some curved stock made out of resin and cloth? Then cover them with veneer? Then make these into a cabinet?

I would use contact cement for the veneer and laminate the fiddle out of strips of solid wood and epoxy.

After passages I always had bruises in just the places where I'd hit the corners (they were rounded but not that rounded) on the nav station and the galley. His cabinets should take care of that.

I find that soft corners do just about as well. Banging into anything can still hurt and yield bruises. I've learned this more than once. I just resign myself to it. Denial didn't work.

I do recommend against curved doors. No matter what you make them out of they tend to distort in shape later. Then they don't close properly.

[Figment]

A friend of mine is a builder of custom furniture. He does lots of curves and veneers. He's been doing it for 30 years, has all the tools and tricks, and rarely gets it right the first time.

When he works on boats he uses solid wood.

[Quetzalsailor]

I've veneered furniture, parts of pianos, parts of a Pianola, boat cabinet parts, Flying Dutchman frames and stem, veneer repairs several lamina deep, and its whole exterior. (Google Quetzalsailor on Photobucket for the FD pics)

The answer to your question is: whichever clamping method is the laziest and easiest for the job at hand.

I've vacuum bagged epoxy but the problem for hackers is the equipment. I bought an old milking pump for the purpose but it's extremely noisy, hot and leaky. (The exhaust is hot enough to melt PVC pipe.) I bought it 'rebuilt' by a seriously rural Amish/Mennonite shop near Intercourse or Paradise PA, but I was never able to find the place again.

I've used contact cement for most of the furniture but have decided that it's the least favored of the choices because of the way the bond seems to creep and the veneer checks.

When possible I simply clamp or ballast veneers using ordinary wood glues for furniture or epoxy for boat parts; it's fast and nearly always reliable. Polyethylene faced plywood to avoid inadvertent bonding. Chunks of plumbers' lead, paint cans, coffee cans of old fasteners, brick, prop sticks, whatever comes to hand to get the pressure.

I laminated the FD frames in place (but not affixed to the boat) and made up a collection of tape-faced plywood blocks arranged for top and bottom and used drywall screws to pull 'em together. The veneer is 1/16" Mahogany and would not make the curve necessary to swoop up onto the centerboard trunk, so I clamped all the precut strips of veneer between fixed strongbacks, steamed them with sponged water and a propane torch, forced a movable strongback to rotate down until more than the required curve was achieved and then let 'em dry.

For core veneer repair on the FD, I prebent 1/16" veneer by soaking it in hot water and rolling it up into the approximate curve. Left it until dry then cut the patches. Of course, not all areas required the prebent veneer. The repairs were clamped by stapling in place with usually adequate care to prevent penetrating the remainder of the hull.

I steamed 1/4" White Oak strips for the stem and clamped them to a form consisting of a sheet of plywood with blocks defining the curve.

I've got 1/8" Mahogany veneer which will make the gentle curve for the new thwart. It's almost wood so I think a simple jig and clamps will suffice.

I clamped all the 1/16" veneers for the exterior of the hull using 1000s of steel staples installed through strips of scrap veneer. Orient the staples with the grain. The strips protect the veneer and enables you to prise the staples out without damage. Mahogany is 'ring porous' so the staple holes, once filled with Mahogany flour and epoxy, don't show.

[Zach]

Thanks for the thoughts guys. I'll do some fooling around and see how the stuff lasts...

Quetzal, thanks for the detailed response!

Zach

[falcon]

Zach,

I rebuilt the teak venerred interior of my boat by applying waterproof wood glue liberally to both surfaces , letting it dry, and then re-activated the glue with an iron. This made alighnment very easy. This technique was sugested to me by a boat builder.

pete

[Steve'O]

Pete- What brand/type of waterproof wood glue did you use? How long ago did you do the work and how has it held up?

[Quetzalsailor]

That sounds something like the traditional veneering method, using animal collagen (hide) glues and a veneering iron.

Collagen glues are water soluble, fine for furniture. They're supposed to be easy to use and forgiving since you can soak mistakes, and parts requiring rebuilding, apart.

I think a waterproof thermoset glue would be very useful. (Perhaps ordinary gluesticks are waterproof.)

[falcon]

Hi Zach,

I think it was Weldwood waterproof wood glue. It was a nice technique because it made alinghnment much easier than using contact cement. The glue is re-activated by heat from the iron. This technique was recomended to me by a cabinate maker that was restoring a Cheoy Lee o/f 27. I bonded teak veneer to 1/4 inch plywood which I had sealed the edgees with neat epoxy. I then laid on several coats of Epifanis Varnish. They look great, but I havent installed them yet. My plan is to glue the pannels to the inside fiberglass cabin side walls with 3M 4200. The areas around the windows had deteriorated due to persistently leaking ports. with 3M 4200. I havent quite figured how to clamp it all yet.

pete

[Quetzalsailor]

Nothing on DAP's site, including their technical bulletin for their Weldwood Plastic Resin Glue, says anything about being able to move a glued joint using heat.

However, I Googled the DAP WPRG and came up with this: http://lumberjocks.com/topics/2795 in which PVA glue (the ordinary yellow wood glue) is usefully thermoplastic.

PVA's water resistant. I read somewhere (WB?) that John Guzzwell built a cold moulded cruising boat with PVA because he's sensitized to epoxy; he had someone else coat out the finished boat with the epoxy thus encapsulating the PVA-bonded wood.

Two interesting parts of the veneering problem are fitting tight joints, and gluing tight joints:

Shaping: 1/42" is todays' typical thickness; I've got Makore in this thickness but have not tried working with it. I fear it will be difficult to shape and way too sensitive to surface imperfections including excess glue. The old standard was 1/32": Rough cut with a sharp knife (#11 X-acto is too delicate, an ordinary Stanley is fine) and plane the edge to perfection using a block plane on its side; place the veneer on a piece of 1" x projecting a little, and hold it under another piece of 1"x; the plane slides on the worksurface and the veneer doesn't often buckle. 1/16" is a piece of cake: Rough cut with the knife, lay the veneer projecting off the table and plane it. Easy to get the curves even if your work is a boat hull. Doesn't buckle readily. End grain fits are tougher; most can be done with the Stanley with just a smidge of cleanup with the plane.

Gluing: Tape splits and joints from the showside whenever possible, using ordinary painters' blue masking tape; you may be peeling the tape before the glue cures. The problem is that the veneers are not necessarily perfect when they're being forced flat and you can't see through the tape. I've taken to edge-setting the next veneer against a firmly-placed previous piece. It's astonishing how big a bubble you can force down! It's a problem you need to solve with ripply veneers anyway. And your best fitting job will be all the more tight. This would work with partly or fully stapled veneers, and with contact cement; I'm not so sure about thermoset or wet glues w/o locating the veneers.

Working with burl veneer is a pain: I've filed pieces to shape since the plane will savage them and they will crumble. Marquetry has got to be a much tougher art!

[Capn_Tom]

I've been using the iron and pva glue method to reveneer existing bulkheads and also to veneer new work in my boat. I have used both Titebond II and a product called Heat Lok. It is definitely easier to work with than contact cement particularly when applying veneer to panels that are already in place. You can find instructions as well as a tremendous veneer assortment at oakwoodveneer.com . The ability to use this method would be dependant on your substrate. The material would have to be able to absorb the glue.

[falcon]

Zach,

I think I used Titebond II not Weldwood.

Pete