Wood Veneer

[vogel]

Can someone please tell me where i can buy a piece of wood veneer in preferably Greater Brisbane area to finish a table top i am sorting for my sister in law.The places i have phoned all wanted to sell me a full sheet which is far more than i require.I stripped off the old veneer and replaced it with very thin ply.After 3 attempts at staining this all have come out very blotchy and yucky and had to be sanded off. I have decided that along with many others staining is not one of my better skills
Thanks in advance

[ian]

well, I was in Carbatech Sydney and they had packs of RiverGum veneer starting at arround $30.
Carbatech Brissy should have the same stuff.

More importantly, what are you trying to do with the table top?
what species veneer do you require?

[vogel]

Thanks for the reply.I stripped off the old veneer and was going to replace it with stained ply,but as i said the finished result was not acceptable after 3 tries so i will either take off the ply and put the veneer on the original table top or put it over the ply. Am i to niave or is this plan ok .The table top is about 185 x 58 cm.I realise i will have to put a new beeding round the side as well.
Thanks again

[ian]

Do you have a photo?
how is the table constructed? what was the original veneer stuck onto?
depending on several factors it might be easier to remake the top from scratch by edging and veneering a piece of chip board

[vogel]

Thanks for the reply please find the attached pics of table.The table top shown is the ply i put on top of the original base that the original veneer was stuck on to

[Kaisergrendel]

Hey Vogel, regarding staining:

You're probably getting blotchiness because the stain is pooling into the more porous areas of the wood. What you need is a sealcoat, which is essentially a heavily diluted coat of topcoat/or a specially formulated sealing film which is usually stiffer and easier to sand than most topcoats. An example is a weak shellac solution which is excellent for this purpose. Just apply a coat then sand lightly to remove some raise grain while leaving most of the shellac inside the pores. Your stain should turn out a whole lot better.

[ian]

Hi Vogel
please correct me where I've misinterpreted your information and photos...

1) you removed all the original veneer
2) you glued 3mm ply to the top and attempted to stain it
3) you sanded off the stain and in the process have in places sanded through the top layer of the ply, also the top is no longer level in that it has slight hollows and is at different heights to the edging pieces.
4) you now want suggestions on how to fix it

This is what I think I'd do
1) remove the top from the base
2) pry or cut off the existing decorative edge strip around the top
3) attach new veneer to the top -- my recommendation would be for two layers, the first with the grain running across the top, the second with the grain running end to end. For both layers let the veneer overhang the edge of the top by a few mm.
Edging and joining veneer is not that difficult, I find the blue 3M painters tape works a treat for holding the veneer sheets together while you're gluing it on and for a top that size I'd get some heavy duty plastic and gaffer tape from the hardware and rig up a vacume bag using a vacume cleaner for suction. You'll also need to veneer the underside of the top.
4) trip the veneer flush with theedge of the top
5) attach new decorative edging in the same timber species as you used for the top veneer to the top so that the edging is about 1mm higher than the top veneer surface all the way round the table and extends say 5mm below the bottom surafce of the top.
6) plane and scrape the top edge of of the edging till it's flush with the new veneer
7) trim the bottom edge of the edging so taht it is a consistent height. You may need to back-up the edging in some places so you don't end up with athin stip below the bottom surface.
8) finish the top

[benupton]

This page has a few Australian Wood Review - Suppliers - Timber and veneers .

[vogel]

Thank you all for the replies,plenty food for thought here.
Ian your summary is basically correct but 1 question why would i put 2 layers of veneer on in different directions as you suggested.
Thanks

[ian]

Vogel
normal veneering practice is to alternate the grain direction when using multiple layers of veneer.
with one layer that would mean the grain in the new veneer was running across that in the ply rather than along the table -- an unusual arrangement.
Also there is a risk that the places where you've sanded through the face veneer of the ply might telegraph through if you only use one layer of new veneer.
It's hard to tell from a photo, but you may also need to patch some of the places where you've sanded through.
If you use two layers the under layer and the veneer on the bottom can be a cheaper species to taht used for the top layer.

On the bright side, if you do go down the route of new face veneer and new edgings, you wont need to stain the top as you will automatically ahve a colour match!

[vogel]

Thanks so much for your reply Ian and i now understand the need for 2 layers of veneer. So now all i have to do is get the job done
thanks