Welcome to Make Something
with me, David Picciuto today, I'm going to show you how
to make your own veneers, which can help you be more
creative in your woodshop. Today's video is brought to you
by Squarespace. Check it. Today, we are going to make our own
veneers. Usually in woodworking, there are multiple ways to
do pretty much everything. You might see someone on YouTube
using big fancy machinery, but that doesn't mean you can't do that
with DIY tools that are more budget friendly. Unfortunately, today is not
going to be one of those situations. To make veneers, you're
going to need some tools. So this video is geared towards
those who have a woodshop. If you don't have the tools, you're
just better off buying veneers, but there are a few
reasons to make your own. The two biggest is you can choose any
wood that you want and you can make it a lot thicker, thin store-bought veneers can be pricey
and you can sand right through them.
A couple of reasons to use veneers over
solid wood is you can veneer plywood that won't expand and
contract over the seasons, which is great for furniture
or large wide pieces. And you can get a lot of mileage
out of rare or unique boards. An example of both of these
situations is a cabinet. I made recently with large walnut doors. I made these veneers to highlight the
contrast between the sapwood and the heartwood of a walnut slab that I had. The must have tools needed
are a bandsaw and a planer. The nice to have is a
jointer and a drum sander. The Planer can be pretty much any planer.
I'm using a big floor standing one, but a lunchbox style planer is
perfectly fine for the bandsaw. You might be able to run small
light boards through a benchtop one. I've done that plenty of times, but you're not going to be able to
find the right blade for bigger boards.
But pretty much any floor standing
bandsaw will work with the correct blade. You'll just be limited on the height, depending on the band saw that you have
the right blade on the bandsaw means everything. You got to get a blade made
for resawing. If you're using a blade, not for resawing and it has
too many teeth per inch, it won't be able to remove
that sawdust efficiently, which is going to cause the blade to
drift and you will not get straight cuts.
Your blade has to be sharp. Not, "I
think it's sharp" but actually sharp. Dull blades will make you push too hard,
which puts pressure onto the blade, which is going to cause drift. The first thing I like to do is have a
board that is surfaced on three sides sides so I we'll run one face
on the joiner to get it flat. Run the opposing face on the planer to
get a parallel and then joint one edge at a perfect 90 degree angle. This
a little brass set up block, it is one eighth of an inch thick. I will set my fence to just
beyond one eighth of an inch. This is a lot thicker
than our final thickness. I will run the board through
the blade. Using some paddles. Slow is the way to go. You should
not be pushing hard at all. I'm barely pushing, letting the blade
do all the work. While at the same time, I'm keeping my board pressed up
against the fence. Going slow, allows the blade to remove all the waste. Otherwise sawdust is going to get
trapped in there and it's going to cause unwanted pressure on the blade
and it'll drift off course.
If you're using the right blade and it's
sharp, you shouldn't have any issues. On these bigger saws. With the bigger blades are hardly
pay any mind to tension and tracking. It just seems to work without much fuss. If the blade is riding up
against the guides, that is okay. That's what they're there
for. And unlike the table saw, it's okay to pause during
the cut to readjust, it's going to leave a rough
surface, but we are expecting that.
Slow is the way to go.
Once you cut your veneer, set it aside and on the remaining piece
go ahead and play that rough surface. Then take that surface that you just
played ride up against the fence on the bandsaw and repeat and keep doing this
until you run out of board to cut. So now all of our veneers have one
smooth side and one rough side, and we're going to run that
rough side through the planer. Planers cannot handle material
this thin.
So I have this sled. All it is is a three-quarter
inch thick piece of plywood, flat plywood with sandpaper
glued on top for grip. And then I can take my veneer, throw it on here and run this
through the planer. A helical head cutter in your planner is probably
going to get you thinner veneers than a straight edge cutter,
but both should work. But what happens is
when you get this thin, you're going to have some casualties. So I got some chip out here and this
usually happens on the tail end and some chip out here. This is only on places
where the grain is not straight. So the straighter of the grain,
the more yield you're going to get.
I do this knowing that I am going
to have a little bit of waste. So I went as low as I could go
before it started to chip out. And as you can see, we
are below 1/16 of an inch. That is pretty good. That's pretty good. You can call it quits right here
and have some nice thick veneers. If you want to even thinner,
you're going to need a drum sander. While we are running these
veneers through the drum sander, I'd like to take a moment to
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for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain That is it. I got five sheets out of
that one board. Like I mentioned, you don't have to have a drum sander,
but it definitely is a nice to have. You can get it down a little bit
thinner. Plus you get a nice, smooth edge on both sides.
So when
it comes time to veneer your board, you're going to want to veneer both sides.
So make a little, a little sandwich. If you only veneer one side, that wet
glue is going to cause it to potato chip. So gluing both sides at the same
time is going to eliminate that. The reason I made some veneers is because
I'm working on a special fun project and I am not veneering something. I'm actually making solid walnut
plywood for a special project. So I'm going to have one veneer go
this way. One veneer go this way. And then one veneer go this way and so on. And I am going to have a
solid walnut sheet of plywood. Typically I wouldn't do that,
but this is a special project. It should be the next
video. It's pretty fun. If it see if it works out, it's one of those things like it could
totally not work. And if it doesn't work, I'll, I'll show you anyways.
I could make a 10 minute video of me
doing this and I would have a great time. So that is going to wrap it
up. Thank you for watching. If you got some good tips today, hit that
thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe. We'll see you next week with a brand
project as always be safe, have fun, stay passionate and veneer
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