In woodworking, sheets of veneer refer to very thin slices of wood, which are usually thinner than one-eighth of an inch. They are generally glued onto a core panel, which is usually wood, medium density fiberboard, or particle board in order to make flat panels such as panels for cabinets, doors, parquet floors, and parts of furniture. Sheets of veneer are also used in marquetry. Plywood is composed of three or more layers of veneer. Each layer is glued with the grain at right angles to the adjacent layers for added strength.
Sheets of veneer can be made of different types of wood, for example, there are bamboo veneer sheets, cherry veneer sheets, mahogany veneer sheets, and oak sheets. Veneer beading is a thin layer of decorative edging which can be placed around objects like jewelry boxes. Sheets of veneer are used instead of decorative papers in Wood Veneer HPL. Veneer can also be a type of manufactured board. Veneer is procured by either peeling the trunk of a tree, or by slicing rectangular blocks of wood called flitches.
The look of the grain comes from slicing through the growth rings of a tree and it depends on the angle that the wood is sliced. The slicing processes give very distinct types of grain depending on the species of the tree. When the sheets of veneer are sliced, a distortion occurs on the grain. The knife blade creates a loose side when the knife open up the cells on the wood, and a tight side when the blade does not open up the cells. Veneering is an ancient are which dates back to the Egyptians. They used sheets of veneer on their sarcophagi and furniture.
There are three main types of veneer-making equipment used commercially:
* A rotary lathe where the wood is turned against a very sharp blade and peeled off in one continuous roll.
* A slicing machine where the flitch or piece of log is raised and lowered against the blade and slices of the log are made. This is known as crown cut
* A half-round lathe where the log can be turned and moved in order to expose the most interesting parts of the grain.
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