Veneering is often thought of as an inferior alternative to well finished, solid timber. But although veneers are sometimes employed to disguise a shoddily made carcase, they are pro­perly used for another reason. For structural reasons, many of the most beautiful timbers are not suitable for use in solid form. Even well seasoned timber is subject to shrinkage, casting, twisting and splitting, especially in centrally heated homes; and many solid timbers have an irregular microstructure which, in shaped work, can shorten the grain and reduce their strength. Furthermore, even if these timbers displayed none of the above faults, they along with the more common hardwood species would be rapidly depleted.

Carefully selected and applied to the right base or groundwork, veneers not only reduce the cost of materials but also enlarge the scope of the designer to create fine furniture, much of which could not be made from solid timber. Small areas of rare hardwoods or common burrs can be cut and built up to cover large areas. Timbers can be cut in such a way that, when used as veneers, they appear as beautiful mirrored repeat patterns or many other decorative effects. The use of veneers also allows stronger methods of construction as well as enabling such things as curves or bow fronted drawers to be made without showing a great number of joints.

Veneers are basically thin slices of wood. Traditionally they were sawn, but now they are always sliced with large, powered knives. Sawn veneers vary in thickness from 1.5mm to 6mm, the most common being 3mm. Modern veneers tend to be fairly standard at 0.8mm, but they can be very much thinner (0.3mm) or up to 9.5mm thick. The thickness depends on the type of timber rather than the method of cutting.

There are three main methods of cutting veneers—rotary peeling, half round slicing and flat slicing.

In rotary slicing (fig. Al) the log is mounted on a large lathe-like machine and revolved against the knife blade to peel off a continuous sheet of veneer. The thickness of the veneer depends on how fast the knife is advanced. Although cheap, rotary slicing pro­duces dull, uninteresting veneers which are mostly used in the manu­facture of plywood.

In the flat slicing method (fig. A2), the knife is fixed and the timber— called a flitch—is moved vertically up and down over it. This gives a better result than the rotary peeling method, but the best results are produced when the flitch is quarter sawn before cutting begins.

In the half slicing method (fig. A3), the flitch is mounted off-centre and revolved over the knife; the figure in the wood will vary (fig. A4) according to the way in which the flitch is cut and how it is mounted on the machine.

There are three ways to cut veneer. Flat cutting and half round cutting produce the best grain patterns, but are more expensive than rotary cutting.