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WT388 – Wood Movement and Wood Thickness

On today’s weekend show we talking about the wood movement and veneer thickness.

William wrote in with this to say:

Try to contain your excitement as I present to you your 10,000th wood movement question. I’ve seen several people make small table tops by veneering relatively thick strips (1/4″-1/2″) of wood to plywood or particle board, in effect flipping the bird to conventional wisdom about the wood expanding or failing later. I can see this working on thinner stock but I wondered if there was a magic number of thickness that should probably be considered the threshold for such an application? Would species make much difference?

One reply on “WT388 – Wood Movement and Wood Thickness”

Hi guys,

It’s funny how the world works sometimes. I was just wondering about this veneer thickness issue last night and today I get Marc’s email that points me here.

I started down the hobby wood working path last year and I’m not too afraid of making mistakes except for when it comes to finishes. Day before yesterday I started on my first finishing project that I had meant to use a stain on. I’ve been hesitant about this part of project since I realized through testing on scraps that despite being red oak lumber and red oak plywood, the stain looks drastically different on the two surfaces. Realizing this was a result of the veneer thickness as it is about 1/32″ I started wondering how thick a veneer I could get away with before running into an issue with the wood moving. So, to answer the question of why I would want to risk using a 1/4″ or more veneer, pursuit of the stability of plywood with the staining characteristics of solid wood. That’s of course assuming I wasn’t happy with the outcome on 1/8″ or 3/16″.

Anyway, thanks guys. This show helped a lot with my thinking on this.

OH! and Marc is one of the people responsible for me diving into wood working. lol

Thanks again guys.

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