Milling and drying…for veneer

I’ve done a fair amount of veneers from apricot of similar size, 1/16 is a nice thickness.

I’ll assume you are going to bandsaw the veneers and that requires that the surfaces are flat. You could cut your wood down into planks and let it dry, but you would lose some thickness to the inevitable cupping when you reflatten for the bandsaw.

I’ve found my best yield with just sawing the veneers after I cut the log down the center and create a flat edge to ride on the table.

Normally it seems best to let the veneer peel away on the outside of the blade, moving the fence for each cut. I have no issues with cutting 1/8” slices between the blade and fence. I’ll cut a few, then usually place the log on the belt sander to reflatten before cutting a few more.

Don’t forget that with a 6” diameter, only a few veneers will be that thick (the pith may ruin the widest) and each successive slice will get narrower.

I’ll stack these “wet” veneers between stacks of paper and weigh them down as they will want to to twist and shrink a bit as they dry.

Before use I’ll run them through the drum sander to get a flat surface for gluing.

I also cut 1” thick slabs for general wood use and let these dry. I’ll usually get 1 or 2 veneers of these when I cut them to final project thickness as a “bonus”

I ve done a fair amount of veneers from apricot of similar size, 1/16 is a nice thickness.

I ll assume you are going to bandsaw the veneers and that requires that the surfaces are flat. You could cut your wood down into planks and let it dry, but you would lose some thickness to the inevitable cupping when you reflatten for the bandsaw.

I ve found my best yield with just sawing the veneers after I cut the log down the center and create a flat edge to ride on the table.

Normally it seems best to let the veneer peel away on the outside of the blade, moving the fence for each cut. I have no issues with cutting 1/8” slices between the blade and fence. I ll cut a few, then usually place the log on the belt sander to reflatten before cutting a few more.

Don t forget that with a 6” diameter, only a few veneers will be that thick (the pith may ruin the widest) and each successive slice will get narrower.

I ll stack these “wet” veneers between stacks of paper and weigh them down as they will want to to twist and shrink a bit as they dry.

Before use I ll run them through the drum sander to get a flat surface for gluing.

I also cut 1” thick slabs for general wood use and let these dry. I ll usually get 1 or 2 veneers of these when I cut them to final project thickness as a “bonus”

- splintergroup

Thank you for this very thoughtful reply! So it sounds like sawing to 1/8” while green and then drying/sanding to 1/16” is a good path to try. If I only had (room for) a drum sander!

Yeah, they can get “lumpy” as they dry as some areas have more moisture than others. I generally figure on a 50% reduction in thickness, though usually it is less.

This blog entry details how I cut some pepper wood about that size.
https://www.lumberjocks.com/shipwright/blog/40311

-- Paul M ..............the early bird may get the worm but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese! http://thecanadianschooloffrenchmarquetry.com/