Need veneering advise please

If you cut it 1/16” oversized total and are careful with placement it will all like up since you would want 1/16” gap between drawers.

-- The quality of one's woodworking is directly related to the amount of flannel worn.

If you have the facilities (vacuum bag or large enough press or veneer hammer and hide glue), you could line the drawer fronts up, spaced as you will use them, and veneer them all at once with the whole piece. When the glue is all cured, separate them with a knife or veneer saw.

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

Additionally, you could have one large board that you cut drawers from, but you veneer it first while it is still one piece. If you use a thin kerf blade, the grain pattern shouldn’t be too far off.

-- The quality of one's woodworking is directly related to the amount of flannel worn.

You might want to do some mockups to see how
tight and consistent you can get the tolerances
on your drawer spacing.

It looks to me like the example piece has the “drawers” on
a pull-out and then mounted to a corner pivot, which
essentially allows them to be stacked up with very
consistent spacing. It’s a good approach to the problem.

Jmartel, I thought about doing this but my plan is to veneer a solid cherry substrate. If I veneer a large board first then cut the drawer fronts, the substrate grain will not run parallel to the length of the drawer front. I’m worried about serious cupping issues if the substrate grain is vertical.

My approach would be as follows (and, I think that I’m just paraphrasing what Shipwright said.)

1> Cut, dovetail, and fit the drawers. (Do all of the joinery.)
2> Lay out the drawer fronts as they will fit in the chest face down on your bench.
3> Using masking tape, tape the drawer fronts together. The aim here is to be able to maintain their positioning relative to each other throughout the remainder of the veneering process.
4> Flip the drawer fronts over so the surface that you will be attaching your veneer to is facing up on the bench.
5> At the moment, I’m a hammer veneering guy, so I would hammer my sheet of burl veneer on at this point.
6> Use a veneer saw to separate the veneer (and therefore the drawers.)
7> Trim excess veneer off of the edges of the drawer fronts.
8> Assemble the drawers.

The benefit to this approach is that you don’t have to worry about keeping the grain perfectly matched from drawer to drawer. It will come as a matter of course.

-- Jesse Felling - http://www.fellingstudio.com

What Jesse and Paul said – but put a piece of cardboard that is the thickness of the saw blade between the drawers as a spacer. Do not run the cardboard all the way to the veneer – leave a 1/4” gap. Doing this gives you the space for the saw blade. Cut down toward the cardboard. Practice this on a mockup a few times first.

Do not disconnect the boxes (remove the cardboard) until the cut is complete or you can splinter the veneer.

-- David in Palm Bay, FL