Veneer for stringing?

[MarkDennehy]

Hi guys, quick (I hope) query - where do you buy veneer for stringing? I've been looking for 0.8mm stuff all day on the intertubes and can't seem to find any (or I'm being dense and staring right at it without realising it). Holly/boxwood/dyed white scyamore, not terribly fussy because I'll mess it up so badly with cackhandedness that I'll cleverly disguise any deficiencies in the material...
Thanks!

 

[yetloh]

Mark,

Most modern veneers are only .6 or .7mm. The easisest solution may be to buy some constructional veneer which is available in greater thicknesses and sand or scrape it down to the required thickness . You could probably do most of the work with a really sharp plane if you used sycamore which is really nice to work with.

Jim

 

[custard]

Personally I prefer to make my own stringing. You can buy it ready cut but pound for pound it has to be the most expensive timber on the planet!

http://www.originalmarquetry.co.uk/cate ... ging_1.htm

There's a sweet spot compromise in the middle by making your own from thicker constructional veneer, just make sure you get the straightest grain stuff you can find,

http://www.originalmarquetry.co.uk/cate ... eers_1.htm

Good luck with your stringing/inlay experiments, and don't hesitate to ask if you run into snags.

 

[MarkDennehy]

Thanks Custard, I definitely didn't want to buy ready-cut stringing, everyone seems to advise against that on the grounds that it won't take a curve which pretty much puts the kibosh on doing the spice cupboard door sort of thing, but the cutter teeth on my radius cutter dig a 0.8mm trench so I thought that was what I needed to find in a veneer, and then slice off strings with a pizza cutter (well, a carbide one anyway). I don't think my little aldi-like bandsaw is up to cutting 0.8mm sheets off raw stock, so I guess I either buy constructional veneer and scrape it down or I go all modern and buy dyed sycamore and make fancy multicoloured plywood so my stringing looks more like very small banding

And thanks for the offer, I definitely will ask when I cock it up

 

[custard]

my radius cutter dig a 0.8mm trench so I thought that was what I needed to find in a veneer

Mark, it's easy enough to thickness down inlay/stringing to whatever you need. Personally I prefer a slightly wedge shaped stringing line for a really snug fit in the groove with zero unsightly gaps. The way I do this is simplicity itself. You start with a slightly oversizes stringing line then progressively thin it down with a small plane that has it's heel running along the bench top, this automatically gives you the perfect wedge shape you need.

This photo illustrates the general principle,

 

[MarkDennehy]

Clever idea with the wedge, haven't seen that mentioned anywhere before (but I guess beginners stuff wouldn't get to it). I can do that, I have a block plane or two...
(Not as bling bling as the Lie-Neilson there, but the blade in my Record is sharp enough )

 

[mrpercysnodgrass]

I definitely didn't want to buy ready-cut stringing, everyone seems to advise against that on the grounds that it won't take a curve "
Mark, stringing will take a curve quite easily. There are a few ways to do it, the easiest is to put a hot air gun in the vice then hold the stringing on either end, bring it to the hot nozzle of the gun and rub it gently back and forth gradually pulling the ends towards you until you have the desired curve, hold it away from the heat for 30 seconds until it has cooled and it will then hold its shape.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

my radius cutter dig a 0.8mm trench so I thought that was what I needed to find in a veneer

Mark, it's easy enough to thickness down inlay/stringing to whatever you need. Personally I prefer a slightly wedge shaped stringing line for a really snug fit in the groove with zero unsightly gaps. The way I do this is simplicity itself. You start with a slightly oversizes stringing line then progressively thin it down with a small plane that has it's heel running along the bench top, this automatically gives you the perfect wedge shape you need.

This photo illustrates the general principle,

I'm sure David Charlesworth would approve. ! think this should henceforth be known as the Custard not-ruler trick

 

[MusicMan]

The Custard Heel Trick?

 

[Bm101]

Amateurs.
I have just registered it with the Official Office Of Naming Stuff as the 'Cold Custard Skim'.
No more work for me. I can sit back and retire on the proceeds.

 

[MarkDennehy]

Probably best; the Custard Heel Trick sounds like a starter course:

 

[Bm101]

You'll be hearing from our lawyers presently Dennehy. It's certainly not the moment for lighthearted response.
Here at ColdCustardSkims'r'Us est: 17.15 (pm) we take ANY infringements of our traditionally refined tooling techniques extremely seriously and will robustly defend any protected... er... nameages and err... work...ages. (?) Anyway. You get the message.
You've been warned.

 

[MarkDennehy]

Small update. Progress has been slow, mainly due to having to dig the shed out from snow, twice...

But I did finally make a straight-line cutter for the groove for the stringing.

Take one was ugly and the mortice wasn't straight however, so the cutter canted at an angle to the edge and so the groove... was more a ragged trench. The beam was salvageable though, so I just recut the fence with the aid of a 1-2-3 block to try to keep the edges square.

It doesn't work too badly; the groove is the right width according to the feeler gauge and it looks identical to the groove cut by the lie-nielsen radius cutter.

But I still haven't sorted out sourcing veneer (I know, I know, I'm a slacker). And the veneer I do have doesn't seem to even be 0.6mm thick and even doubling up on it looks ugly up close.

Custard, that source you gave me, all the whiteish woods they list on the constructional veneer page seem to me to be in pretty hefty quantities - am I just not used to the idea of buying veneer in sheets twelve feet long? Or is the webpage just a kind of guide and would they be nice and sell me a few sheets of horse chestnut or something else white that were about two feet long if I asked nicely? I'm pretty sure An Post would take a look at a 12 foot length of veneer and get all the guys in the post office together to see who could fold it up the most just out of spite

 

[custard]

I take my hat off to you Mark, making your own tools to get a job done is serious stuff.

If I drum sand some bright white, saw cut veneers down to say 1.0mm would that be enough to get you up and running? PM me with your address and I'll sort something out.

Incidentally, for stringing and inlay I generally use Arctic Sycamore or Holly. Rightly or wrongly I've got a pretty low opinion of Horse Chestnut (Sweet Chestnut is a different timber entirely).

 

[Droogs]

Mark, don't be afraid to try cutting your own veneer on your bandsaw. Get a decent blade on it and make a good adjustable high face fence to run in your saws slot and you'll be surprised what you can achieve. I use a Scheppach Basato 1 for this and it does fine. I have both a single pivot point fence for free hand feeding and a flat melamene faced fence that I use with DS tape to secure more regular shape wood from which to saw my veneers.

For the stringing, after it is sawn, I then pull it through a hand made thicknesser (shop made) similar to the Steve Lata one that Lee nielsen sell.

 

[MarkDennehy]

Thanks Custard, that's a lovely offer. Wouldn't the post from the UK to Ireland be a killer though? I don't want to put anyone out!

Droogs, my bandsaw is basically the Aldi one (well, the Titan version of it, but it's all from the same factory). Even with its tuffsaws blade I'm not sure if it could manage to slice off a 1mm thick veneer. I do have a scrap I could try with though, so I'll give it a go.

For thicknessing, I was planning on going a bit Irish and old-school...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM3OT66iTOs&t=1m9s

 

[MarkDennehy]

...and no, afraid my bandsaw isn't up to it. Blade wanders quite a bit and the closest I got was a single six-inch piece that wavered between 1.2mm and 0.5mm
Well, it is really just for rough cuts....

 

[Droogs]

I'm loaded witht he flu and about to go away for a fortnight, so not anywhere near the wksp in the next few days. When I get back, will dig out the plans for my bandsaw sled for cutting veneers and send it to you. Don't give up it took me about a week to get any sort of uniformity and consistency. The main thing is blade tension and feed speed. I've cut reasonable slices even with a 1/4" blade. Admitedly they have needed a good few draws through the hand thicknesser adjusting a little at a time.

 

[MarkDennehy]

Another small update. I tried cutting my own veneer... and just couldn't get it to work at all I'm afraid.

I mean, maybe if I needed to put in a wavering line or something...
So I tried laminating two 0.6mm sheets together, pressing them between sheets of MDF while the glue dried. Didn't work too badly:

(It's the line on the right).
I'm still emailing suppliers trying to find somewhere that does constructional veneer in quantities that aren't ridiculous compared to how much I'd use, but so far I'm not actually getting any responses. I did buy some horse chestnut veneer from originalmarquetry.co.uk but it turned out to be 0.6mm too Right size of pack though:

I'll keep looking but in the meantime the laminated sheets seemed good enough to give a try with, so...

(sorry about the card, it was the only plastic card I could find to use as the surface for the pivot point of the radius cutter)

That cutter's brilliant btw, no tendency to follow the grain away from the straight edge at all. It will take off your finger if you hang it over the edge of the ruler though...

The endpoints of the stringing are a bit cack-handed, but for a first attempt I'm not too upset about that. I do need to get a bending iron of some kind (I don't want to drag my hot air gun from the electronics bench out to the shed but I suppose if I have to...). I could manage those curves with just friction heat while rubbing the stringing into shape between my fingers but the remaining curves are a bit too aggressive for that. And it's not finished yet by a long shot, there are a few more bits on those sides alone, and then there are seven or eight more surfaces on that project that might get some decoration (which should tell you how bad the joinery is ).

 

[custard]

Full credit to you Mark, you're knocking down the obstacles and rocketing up the learning curve. I've never glued up stringing thicknesses so I don't know this for sure, but I doubt it'll help when it comes to bending stringing lines.

Look in your PM box.