Building a Planing or Surfacing Jig

Read Time: 6 mins

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Woodworking often seems to be about building or making something to do a job you need done, but don't have the tool for. I would love to have a 20 or 24 inch planer, or 24 inch belt sander, unfortunately I would use either so seldom it would not be a cost effective purchase.
So, when I need to plane a board that is too thick, if it is larger than my 15 inch planer, I have to devise another way of planing the board down. There are a few options, you can find a local woodworking shop to plane or sand the board down (for a price), or you can use a hand plane (which is very tedious if it is a large board), you can take the fence of many jointers and make multiple passes, but then you have re-install the fence and adjust it, you could use a hand power planer (but they can gouge the wood if you are not careful) and the last option ... which is the one I opted for is to make a planing jig or planing sled that I can use my router on.

These jigs are not new and have been around in one form or another for years. I you purchase rough sawn lumber from local mills or suppliers, this is something that will be a Must Have in your workshop. Or if you don't have a planer of any size, this allow you to plane and re-surface boards in fairly short order, and do a great job of it.

Cold Press or Vacuum Press Wood Veneering

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The next step after understand HOW veneering works, is to try it, and in this video, that's what we have done. To show a bit more about what veneering is all about we actually too three bookmatched sheets of veneers and attached them with veneering tape. The process is quite simple, but being able to watch a video of it being done is much easier than try to explain it.

After attaching the sheets and preparing a back sheet as well (all veneering works best when veneering is done on BOTH sides of the substrate). The next step is simple, coat ALL sides to be glues together with a coating of veneer glue. All glues have what is called an Open Time, which simply means how long the glue can be exposed to air before it starts to dry out. With veneering glue the open time (depending on brand) is normally around 15 - 20 minutes, unless you are working in a dry, hot environment, then it is substantially reduced. All this means is that when you are working with glues, you need work steady, with no lag times.

Once one side of the substrate is covered with glue and the matching veneer as well, they are simply bonded together and it is best now to roll the veneer to make sure no air bubbles are showing.

An Introduction to Veneering

Read Time: 6 mins

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Veneering in woodworking is not new, it has been around in one form or another for centuries. It has been practiced by woodworkers in many different parts of the world, often as smaller pieces, for inlays, accents and other features. Today, we have an amazing breadth of wood species to choose from, from almost any exotic hardwood you can imagine, to figure woods and burls that are spectacular. With all the varieties and figured wood veneers that are available now, anyone who wants to take the time to learn veneering can turn out wood projects that are truly works of art.

There are basically three kinds of veneering, the oldest form and the one we are going to spend the most time on here, is called cold veneering, where veneer strips are glued to a substrate or base. Also becoming quite popular are is veneering where a glue has been applied to the back of the veneer and it can be attached to the substrate by simply by peeling off a plastic or waxy backing and then sticking the veneer on to the substrate. This is called Pressure Veneering and only requires a type of blade or edge to smooth the veneer out over the substrate and is ideal for smaller projects. The third kind of veneering is done by using a veneer with a heat activated glue pre-applied to the back of the veneer, and is called Heat Activated Veneering. In this case the veneer is laid on the substrate material and something a simple as a household iron is used to attach the veneer to the substrate.

All of these methods of veneering work well, not all of them in the same situations, and that is why there are different kinds ... because some work better in one instance while another works better somewhere else. Any of the pre-applied glue veneers are more costly than raw veneers and the choices of veneers is far less with the pre-applied glue types. For larger veneering projects and where ongoing veneering is the norm, the cold veneering with raw veneers is easily the most effective and preferred method. Other types are normally more suited for smaller projects.

Make it Accurate with the Right Square

Read Time: 5 mins

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Have you ever cut all the pieces for a woodworking project then tried to put them together and found that they just don't fit together nicely? Could it be that the one tool you rely on most, your square is not giving you a proper angle reading ?

One of the most frustrating things about woodworking, especially for new woodworkers, is when you are working away on your project and it comes to starting to put it together and it just doesn't fit nicely. There are gaps in the joints, some of the angles seem to be off a bit, it just isn't coming to gether nicely.

When this happens, you get out your square and start double checking your cuts  and if your square is off to begin with, measured one way, your cuts will be perfect, but reverse the square and if the joint is WAY OFF when reversed, then your square is the problem, not your woodworking ability. In many cases when this happens, you cannot go back and re-set up the machinery and re-cut the wood because it will be too small, so now you have a very expesive stack of firewood, or more wood for your cut-off pile that hopefully you will have a use for one day.

One of the tools we use continuely  in our work, often with out even thinking about it is the square. The lowly square has been around for ever and has remainend basically unchanged in thousands of years. Today, we can purchase all sorts of different variations of the square, large squares, small squares, adjustable squares  ....