Veneer (redirected from veneers)

veneer (vənēr`), thin leaf of wood applied with glue to a panel or frame of solid wood. The art of veneer developed with early civilization. It produces richly grained effects cheaply and is used also on structural parts that must be cut with the grain for strength. The grain pattern varies with the direction of the cut, woods cut across the grain in general displaying more effective patterns, e.g., burr and oyster walnut, bird's-eye maple. Rosewood, satinwood, maple, walnut, and mahogany are frequently employed for veneers. Hand-cut veneers were 1-10 to 1-8 in. thick; the modern machine-cut sheets are rarely thicker than 1-32 in. Veneering executed in inlaid sheets is known as marquetry. Plywood and beams or planks of compounded woods are developed by a veneering process.

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veneer

Extremely thin sheet of rich-coloured wood (such as mahogany, ebony, or rosewood) or precious materials (such as ivory or tortoiseshell) cut in decorative patterns and applied to the surface of a piece of furniture. Though veneering was practiced in Classical antiquity, its use lapsed in the Middle Ages. It was revived in the 17th century, reaching its apogee in France and spreading from there to other European countries. The considerable craftsmanship involved in artistic veneering is most evident in the 18th and early 19th centuries, when Thomas Chippendale, George Hepplewhite, and Thomas Sheraton used mahogany and satinwood veneers. By the mid-19th century mechanical saws allowed the veneering process to be used in mass production to cover defects in cheap furniture.

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veneer [və′nir]

(materials)

A thin sheet of wood of uniform thickness used for facing furniture or, when bonded, used to make plywood.

A facing, as of brick or marble, on the outside of a wall.

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veneer

1. A thin sheet of wood that has been sliced, rotary-cut, or sawn from a log; often used as the top one of several layers of plywood serving as a facing that is bonded to a less attractive wood, or as facing on a fire-rated material.

2. An outside wall facing of brick, stone, etc.; provides a decorative, durable surface but is not load-bearing.

3.See brick veneer.

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Veneer 

wood in the form of thin sheets obtained by peeling off short logs on veneer peeling machines (rotary-cut veneer), slicing logs on veneer-cutting machines (sliced veneer), and sawing on veneer-sawing machines or gang mills (saw cut veneer).

Saw cut veneer (1–10 mm thick) is made from spruce, Nordmann’s fir, and Siberian stone pine. The highest quality veneer, it is used to make the soundboards of string instruments. The production of saw cut veneer entails substantial losses of wood in saw dust; the usable output of veneer is not more than 40 percent of the raw material.

Rotary-cut (0.1–10 mm thick), the most common variety of veneer, is made from birch, beech, oak, spruce, alder, aspen, pine, and other tree species. It is widely used to make plywood, plywood sheets, laminated wood plastics, and other types of laminated wood. Other uses include the decoration of cabinetwork, the production of matches and matchboxes, and the manufacture of separators for lead electrical accumulators.

Sliced veneer (0.2–5 mm thick) is produced from acacia, beech, oak, elm, chestnut, walnut, yew, ash, Karelian birch, mahogany, and other fine woods that have attractive grain. The desired decorative effect of the grain exhibited by different sections of the wood determines the direction of slicing. Several types of sliced veneer are distinguished on this basis, with radial, radialtangential, tangential, and tangential-face cuts. Sheets sliced from one log in sequence are packed in bundles in the order of slicing to help select veneer by color and grain. Sliced veneers are used in cabinetwork.

The growing scarcity of fine wood and the difficulty of artificially reproducing a texture equivalent in decorative effect to natural wood grain have encouraged the development of thin and ultra-thin (0.08–0.15 mm) veneers of fine woods and the improvement of the natural grain of the wood of ordinary species by special treatment (slicing on an angle to the longitudinal axis of the trunk, wavy slicing and peeling, conical peeling).

REFERENCES

Spravochnik fanershchika, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1968.
Proizvodstvo lushchenogo i stroganogo shpona. Moscow, 1970.
Kanashkin, I. A. Proizvodstvo tonkogo lushchenogo shpona. Moscow, 1974.

I. K. CHERKASOV