# Veneer for stringing?



## MarkDennehy (18 Feb 2018)

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!


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## yetloh (18 Feb 2018)

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


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## custard (19 Feb 2018)

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.


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## MarkDennehy (19 Feb 2018)

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


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## custard (19 Feb 2018)

MarkDennehy":2bqh4xxq said:


> 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,


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## MarkDennehy (19 Feb 2018)

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  )


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## mrpercysnodgrass (20 Feb 2018)

MarkDennehy said:


> 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.


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## Woody2Shoes (20 Feb 2018)

custard":2kvcgj2d said:


> MarkDennehy":2kvcgj2d said:
> 
> 
> > my radius cutter dig a 0.8mm trench so I thought that was what I needed to find in a veneer
> ...



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


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## MusicMan (20 Feb 2018)

The Custard Heel Trick?


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## Bm101 (20 Feb 2018)

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.


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## MarkDennehy (20 Feb 2018)

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


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## Bm101 (20 Feb 2018)

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.


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## MarkDennehy (26 Mar 2018)

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


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## custard (27 Mar 2018)

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).


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## Droogs (27 Mar 2018)

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.


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## MarkDennehy (27 Mar 2018)

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


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## MarkDennehy (27 Mar 2018)

...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....


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## Droogs (27 Mar 2018)

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.


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## MarkDennehy (29 Apr 2018)

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  ).


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## custard (30 Apr 2018)

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.


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## Droogs (30 Apr 2018)

Great going Mark, looks good so far. each time you inset a piece you will improve as you will learn a bit more each time. With regard to the sawing of the inlay, the following vid may help you a bit. The main thing to remember is you are not trying to get the inlay to the needed dimension off the saw. I allways saw over size and then shave it down to size. 
Once the wide strip comes off the saw, cut to just a little over the final seen width of the inlay. I then place the veneer strip flat on a cutting board and clamp a 1" high guide on top, leaving a section of the veneer sticking out to the side (still supported by the cutting board). The sticky out piece is as wide as the depth of the inlay groove I intend to cut plus 1mm ( to allow of scraping level later) plus the thickness of my hand veneer saw.

So I end up with a rectangular cross section, the longer side being the vertical face) and the shorter obviously being the horizontal face that will be seen once inlaid in place. Both dimensions at this time are too large.

The vertical face will not be changed until *after *the inlaying has been completed, the other face is now worked on to get it to the dimension needed. this is done by pulling it through a hand thicknesser, which has a blade as sharp as you can make it, and adjusting the gap down 100TH of a mm at a time until the inlay piece is evenly thicknessed and fits into the inlay groove. Once glued in the remaining overspill that is above the suface is then scraped of using either a #80 or a card scraper.

Just another thing I do, is this: when I am marking out. I cover the area carefully with blue marquetry tape first. This helps me to draw the design without marking or damaging the surface of the board and seems to give a much better, crisper arris to the inlay groove. When it comes to actual inlaying it helps prevent any glue compromising the board suface.

hth

EDIT (forgot to put vid link in #-o ) http://theapprenticeandthejourneyman.co ... -band-saw/


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## MarkDennehy (30 Apr 2018)

Thanks Droogs, useful tips! I still have some jig-making to do, it seems.

And Custard, thanks for the offer and I will take you up on it, at least to get me a little further down the runway!


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## MarkDennehy (30 Apr 2018)

Not terrible for a first try when you clean it up...


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## Bm101 (2 May 2018)

=D> 
Crack on Mark. Great progression. Fair play to you.


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## MarkDennehy (8 May 2018)

More progress - Custard very, *very* generously sent me some veneer to experiment with while I try to find a local commercial source, that's due to arrive today and I'm kinda giddy to see it; but we had sunshine over the bank holiday weekend so I had to hide in the shed and mother's day is coming up so...
















And some contrasting stringing using walnut veneer for the feet:






And I started the first stage of the glueup -






Finicky, but I checked in on it this morning and it worked nicely. The feet are just on with butt joints, but it's not like this is going to be hit with a hammer, it should be fine - both sides stand nice and stable on their own right now. 

I'll finish with something simple (osmo maybe? I don't want to darken the stringing too much), and then I'll tackle something a bit more complex with the stringing using Custard's material and the heatgun for tighter radii and custom-cut plugs so the berries aren't all the same colour and maybe I can try some banding...


...and then I'll probably go back and do something jacobian with no inlay at all and a bunch of oak carving just to forget it all so I can go relearn it later (sans mistakes this time) for making xmas presents


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## Bm101 (8 May 2018)

Said it before. Fair play to you Mark. That is excellent. Course there's the odd bit you're not happy with, it's your first attempt. It's a good thing you're not happy with it as long as you balance it with a rightful sense of achievement. 
(On the sidetrack quickly, did you ever see the Irish TV programs Hands? Probably you're well aware of it I guess. If not I think you'll love it. Just in the unlikely case it's slipped past you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx2y7MAys20&t=215s
I'm six weeks in (yesterday) to giving up the 40 a day 25 year habit.
If i 'm having a little rage/fingercurl/stand up sit down stand up moment I put this on. Swear to God it works like a charm. I'm like a 2 year old watching the baby methadone of teletubbies.
If that fails then _this _weeks answer is Finbar Furey And Christy Dignam on your very own Late Late Show. You're under no obligation to like this for just being Irish of course but it works better for me than going out to run people over in my van like I'm playing Grand Theft Auto. So that's good. :wink: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofhao4SHXGo

 *¯\_(ツ)_/¯*

I'd post proper youtube video links but for some reason I have forgotten how to do it. 
=D> Well done mate.


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## MarkDennehy (8 May 2018)

It was that episode of Hands that had me thinking stringing was a thing I could do - specifically the bit where he's using a slot cut in what looks like an old bit of saw plate to size the stringing


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## thetyreman (9 May 2018)

looks good mark! keep those pics coming =D>


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## MarkDennehy (9 May 2018)

Holy dung.
Custard, you maniac.

This is what I was hoping he'd send:





It's a small batch of sycamore veneer, a few sheets of it to experiment with while I found a local commercial source. In face, the bottom sheaf there is all I was hoping for. 

This is what he sent:





Holy dung!





A small board of curly cherry (I've never even seen cherry in the... er.. flesh? - it's lovely, I understand now why people like to make furniture with it), some thick walnut veneer including some heavily rippled walnut which is *magnificent*...






Some lovely thick ebony and boxwood veneer and a board of rippled sycamore that is just unbelievably beautiful. I need to find a local source over here for sycamore, it's just too damn pretty!

Thanks so much Custard, I'm going to have to do something ambitious with this


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## AndyT (9 May 2018)

He really is VERY generous!
What a top bloke. =D> =D> =D> =D> =D>


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## MarkDennehy (11 May 2018)

Another small update. Shelf completed, a small present for herself for the office to keep her desk a bit tidier (she didn't know I was doing it and is quite happy with it because she hasn't seen the mistakes yet  ).

http://www.stochasticgeometry.ie/2018/0 ... -finish-2/

Simple finish, just two coats of Osmo. Might add on a third sneaky coat tonight...


























Now I need to go and have a little think about what to do to best use Custard's very generous gift!  
I haven't made a little chest of drawers before (little as in, say, a foot tall and a foot wide and six inches deep with four or five drawers). Something like the US spice chest box idea...


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## custard (12 May 2018)

Great start Mark! 

There's quite a few areas where stringing and inlay can really add quality and value to a piece. Stringing on legs accentuates any tapering, and makes the legs look slimmer and more elegant. Stringing around the edges of a drawer adds definition, especially if it loops around an escutcheon or a drawer pull. 

And there are plenty of unique little twists you can work in, for example I've incorporated morse code messages into stringing using a combination of Ebony and Sycamore stringing. That's an idea I picked up from Garret Hack who uses stringing in very innovative and contemporary ways,

http://www.finewoodworking.com/2008/08/ ... -stringing


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## Woody2Shoes (12 May 2018)

custard":3s3hr7qk said:


> ... I've incorporated morse code messages into stringing using a combination of Ebony and Sycamore stringing.....



So tell us more....what kind of messages...are you working for the Russians?


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