Veneering is fairly easy and cheap way of creating beautiful furniture. Veneering dates back all the way to the ancient Egypt. Both furniture and sarcophagi were made using veneers. Veneering offers a number of advantages but nowadays lower cost is the main advantage. By using veneer you can use cheaper wood for most parts and only use beautiful veneer on the visible parts. Furniture made with veneer also use less wood than the same piece of furniture made of solid wood.

Veneers are available in hundreds of varieties. Some of them are as thin as 1/100 inch. By using veneers you can use woods that would be far too expensive to buy as solid woods. Since veneer is thin, more of the tree can be used. The finest logs are sent to the veneer producers. Very little wood is wasted in the production of veneer. Examples of decorative and rate veneers are Brazilian rosewood, pearwood and zebrawood.

A log can be cut into veneer in three different ways, flat slicing, rotary cutting and saw cutting. Saw cutting is not as efficient as the other two methods but is still used for irregularly grained and dense woods. Rotary cutting and flat slicing can produce veneer as thin as 1/120 inch. Wide veneer is best created using rotary cut while long pieces are best made using flat slicing.

Veneering is mostly done using a veneer hammer which presses down the veneer onto a panel. But you can also use a veneer press for this. A veneer saw is used for trimming and cutting of veneer. It has a curved blade and an offset handle. If you are applying more than one sheet of veneer to a panel, tape them together using special veneer tape and before gluing them together onto the panel.

Veneering is easy but requires a lot of patience. One of the most important steps is the trimming. First cut the sheets of veneer to the right size. If you are going to join sheets of veneer, you must make sure that the adjoining sheets of veneer are perfectly square. This is easiest done using a shooting board made of plywood. Place the two pieces of veneers face to face and sandwich them into the shooting board. Make sure that the sheets of veneer are perfectly aligned. Then run a plane along the shooting board to trim of the veneer.

Once the veneer is in place and the glue has cured, you can trim the veneer that shows up beyond the face of the panel. The quickest way to do this is by using a laminate trimmer. But be careful not to tear the veneer. A slower but safer option is to use a mill file.