In woodworking, thin wood veneer refers to slices of wood that are commonly thinner than one-eighth of an inch. These thin wood veneers are typically glued onto core panels such as particle board, medium density fiberboard and wood in order to produce flat panels such as tops, panels, and doors for parquet floors, cabinets, and other parts of furniture. Thin wood veneer is also used in marquetry. Plywood is made up of three or more layers of thin wood sheets of veneer, each of them glued with its grain at right angles to the adjacent layers for added strength. Veneer beading is a thin layer of decorative edging which is placed around objects, such as jewelry boxes. Veneer is also used to replace decorative papers in Wood Veneer HPL. Veneer is also a type of manufactured board.
Thin wood veneer is acquired either by peeling the trunk of a tree or by slicing large rectangular blocks of wood known as flitches. The appearance of the grain and the figure in the wood comes from slicing through the growth rings of a tree. It also depends upon the angle in which the wood is sliced. There are three main types of veneer making equipment that is used commercially:
* A rotary lathe – in which the wood is turned against a sharp blade and then peeled off in one continuous or semi-continuous roll. Rotary-cut veneer is usually used for plywood, since the appearance is not as desirable because the thin wood veneer is cut concentric to the growth rings of the tree.
* A slicing machine – in which the flitch is raised and lowered against the blade and slices of the log are made. This yields veneer that ends up looking like sawn pieces of wood that are cut across the growth rings. This thin wood veneer is known as “crown cut.”
* A half-round lathe – in which the log can be turned and moved in a way to expose the most interesting parts of the grain.
Each slicing process gives a very distinctive type of grain, especially depending upon the tree species. In any of the sheet veneer slicing methods, when the veneer is sliced, a distortion of the grain will occur. As it hits the wood, the knife blade creates a loose side where the cells have been opened up by the blade, and a tight side. Historically real wood veneer sheets were also sawn, but this is more wasteful of wood. Veneer edge banding is an ancient art, which dates back to the ancient Egyptians who used thin wood veneer on their furniture and their sarcophagi. Visit here for more: band-itproducts.com