I have a question about oak veneer, and veneers of other ringporous woods.
How do they make it? I assume rotary cutting veneer is not possible since it is a ringporous wood species. Is it all slice cut?
What’s the max width you can get it, since slice cutting can make length. Yet width is really a problem I would say, isn’t it?
I am wondering since my main interest is in drum building (musical drums) and for this you need both wide and long veneers to do cross-banding,
Looking forward to your response,
J
Replies
They certainly do use rotary cutting of oak. I don't know anything about the techology but you see the oak cathedrals all the time.
But I don't know why it matters all that much. Veneer can be edge joined, so you can get the more attractive sliced figure, including quartersawn, over any width you want.
Do mean in age-old cathedrals? I cannot imagine they they did do rotary cutting veneer in these days already.Can you get oak veneers of e.g. 1.5 m (=5 feet) width nowadays? Where?
When I read your post, I thought you were yanking our collective chains, but it is possible you are not. The reference to cathedrals is a common way of describing the arching grain pattern of oak and many other wood species. I don't believe it has any connection to the actual European cathedrals or their use of any particular species of wood.
Hehe, yes now I see, 'cathedral' is the grain pattern which is visible in plain sliced (oak) veneer.
It seems as well that rotary cutting oak is possible... though I have always thought that this is not possible as oak is ring-porous.
If the earlywood zones are too thick this causes problems since one layer only consists of vessels, but apparantly this is not a big deal in practise.
When they rotary slice veneer, they have a full-length presure bar which actually compresses the wood fibers right in front of the knife so the wood does not fray apart on these open vesseled portions. I am always amazed they can do this so well with hard maple, that the rotary grain is very good quality if you don't mind the non-traditional pattern. As mentioned earlier, plain sliced is more expensive because they must tape it together into wide sheets. It also has a much finer surface texture, free of the long gouges you will find in rotary. In my shop, all exposed faces are plain sliced, but interiors can sometimes be rotary sliced. Personally, I won't use rotary Oak on any thing; I just think it's ugly. Remember, keep those cathedrals pointing toward the sky, as this is yet another industry standard.
Yes it is those grain hallmarks of rotary cut veneer that I was speaking of. Sorry about being obscure. Its not that hard to joint veneer even in a home shop, so don't let the difficulty of getting 60" wide veneer be a determinate.
Edited 11/7/2005 9:39 pm ET by SteveSchoene
For building drums is important to have big sheets, that's why I asked in the first place.
See e.g. http://www.prosoundmusic.co.uk/Prosoundimage/OakDrumSet.JPG
I must be dense, but why do the sheets have to start as big sheets. Can't the the veneer be made into big sheets in the process of laminating the drums. I don't remember rotary veneer on the couple of Cooperman drums I sanded, but that was many years ago.
When we used to order veneer layed up on 3/4 MDF from a veneer mill, they always had us specify short grain or long grain, so they can easily lay up sheets with 8' wide of vertical grain. I would think this would be just the ticket for drum cylinders.
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