I am building a curved front chest of drawers which I will veneer with American sycamore. Here are the questions: if I want to use maple for the drawer fronts plies and will be resawing to 1/8″ thick to glue up in a veneer press, will I have better luck with soft or hard maple or will it matter? Is there a better choice than maple? I will be hand cutting dovetails on the drawers. Should I glue up the substrate plies first in one pressing and then do the veneer later, or do them all together?
The side assemblies with be post and panel. With the panels being veneered in sycamore, I would like the solid posts to be a darker wood for contrast. Walnut seems a good choice but opinions and ideas are welcome!
Thanks, Keith
Replies
Keith, I don't think the species of maple used for the subsrtate makes a whole lot of difference. I guess I'd opt for the soft maple, especially if you have a good source for red maple (Acer rubrum.) It's normally sold as a "soft" maple and is more affordable than hard maple...but it is denser and stonger than other soft maples. Also it is the most stable of all the maples, including hard maple.
As for your contast wood in the posts. That's a subjective choice, falling under the heading of artistic license...but functionally, walnut would be tough to beat. It's relatively stable, volumetrically, and also well above average in terms of minimal risk of distortion.
...In fact, if you suspect distortion might be a problem in the drawer front substrate, you might want to consider yellow poplar instead of one of the maples. It's not quite as strong as even the softer soft maples, but it should be strong enough...it has better shrinkage characteristics, it's readily available and it's cheap.
Jon
My initial reasoning for choosing maple was to use a strong, lighter colored wood substrate to come close to the face veneer color. That way I could use a darker wood for the sides and have the nice, showy dovetail contrast. However, I've also considered a substrate of Mahogany. I could then use stable quarter sawn maple for the sides.
Since I have no experience with sycamore, I'll have to see what some finish samples do to its' color to see what I like as my post and top frame wood. Thanks for the feedback. Any other thoughts or cautions will be most welcome.
Keith
Keith, if your sycamore veneer is radial (meaning it exhibits a showy, ray-band figure) you'll want to avoid any kind of stain on it. You can tint it a little with dye, but pigment stains tend to heighten the contrast and really ruin nice ray figure.
I use radially cut sycamore for the sound boards on some of my dulcimers and it's absolutely beautiful stuff...but I seldom finish it with anything but clear lacquer...or if I do try to tint it a little, I first apply a sealer coat of clear lacquer, followed by slightly pigmented lacquer touch-up coats until I get the shade I want.
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