Cutting veneers and boards on a band saw.

Hi there, I'm a student completing her DT a-level and I'm doing my project on designing and making an object/item/tool that will assist in the easy making of veneers and boards on a band saw. I was wondering if you have any existing products that help assist in this area, or if you have any knowledge on ways and methods to complete this process easily, including the kerf in the measurements, meaning you don't have to re-measure every time.

Thank you for your time.

Veneered boards can probably be cut to size on a bandsaw, (Veneer upermost ), with a fine tooth blade (The finer the better to avoid chipping. ) The infeed needs to be fine also.

Personally would cut slightly over size and then sand back to size, for just that reason.

MAKING veneers on a bandsaw would be impossible, I suspect, A veneer is very thin timber, probably 0.127 mm ( 127 microns ) thick or so; extremely fragile.

You wpu;ld need to set a fence which limited the depth of cut to aminute amount.

The usual means of making a veneer is to shave it off from a rotating workpiece, where the work rotates against a stationary blade; rather llike a mirror image of a wood planing machine operation, where the blade rotates against the work, to produce thin chips.

Study some woodworking books to find the methods used.

Howard.

Just one clarification, Howard … Skived veneers are very economical, but they are not suited to ‘pairing’ for decorative effect … saw cut veneers are essential for that

So, this looks like it might be the answer to Elisha’s question:

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Go Compare !!

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You don't want a fine blade as it will just clog with sawdust, I use 4tpi. skip pattern What you do want is a thin kerf blade unless you are happy to waste wood. A good depth 3/4" blade will be about right and properly tensioned and tracked

A good tall fence is all that is needed to run a preferably planed face against which will set a constant thickness, after cutting plane the surface again before cutting the next veneer.

Bandsaen veneers are typically thicker than knife cut so you will be looking at 1 to 1.5mm and they will require more finishing so the extra thickness is useful there.

13 leaves of oak I cut on a bandsaw

20mm thick total

As for decorative effect all methods can be used depending on the grain and what type of pattern you want, these are knife cut (sliced not rotary) and give quite a nice decorative effect when bookmatched etc In fact knife veneer is better for book matching as there is no kerf which is the equivalent of loosing pages

Edited By JasonB on 21/06/2023 19:43:46

Jason, you are amazing! You away have a perfect example to back up your wisdom

+Keith

I stand corrected … Saw-cut veneers were traditional … Jason has shown that knife cut has advantages.

Does anyone have a video of the necessary machine in action ?

Sounds like it must be a giant version of a Microtome !!

MichaelG.

Thanks, Jason

MichaelG.