Veneered elements - an economical alternative to solid wood or the ideal technical solution

by Radu Vădan

I discover interesting things in my interactions with customers over the years. Many entrenched beliefs in the collective mind about furniture and wood have been formed and passed on in our oral culture over the last 80-100 years, replacing the few solid, experience-based knowledge that the skillful peasant who built his own small wooden objects around the house had. For example, I often encounter a deep disregard for fir wood, which has a reputation for being soft or too poor quality to be used for furniture (if selected, it is an excellent wood for furniture).

Many customers also refuse cherry woodbecause it would be red. Cherry wood is yellowish-orange when cut, and after exposure to daylight for a few months it turns a light brown and stays that way. The reddish color of sad memory is due to the generously applied bathing in the CPLs of the '60s and '80s. The examples could go on and on, but the one I'll focus on here is the use of furnishings in furniture production.

The application of veneer on the surface is often done for technical and/or technological reasons

I'll start with an example. I recently had a discussion with a client regarding a desk top. The countertop was to be made of ash wood solid. But for constructive reasons, I chose to propose a narrow slat countertop, on which I applied an aesthetic veneer of 1.5 mm on both sides. These were my arguments:

• The slatted construction, with balanced fiber, significantly reduces the chance of seasonal swelling and shrinkage, which can cause the countertop to warp.
• The veneers being of very good quality and large width (two sheets of about 40 mm wide) draw on the surface two blades, without knot or color variations.
• The veneer chosen is thick enough to be refinished at least three times. Assuming that we remove about 0.3 mm per sanding, I would estimate a lifetime of at least 45 years, if the countertop required a complete sanding every 15 years.

The customer's argument was that they would prefer solid wood, not veneer - that veneer is somehow a scam or hiding something. I won't divulge the decision, I'll let you decide for yourself.

I come back, however, to the idea that veneer somehow conceals shoddy workmanship or reflects the manufacturer's thrift. First of all, it must be accepted that, yes, in certain situations, applying veneer to a surface can be an economically advantageous solution over building that surface in solid wood, especially if similar quality is desired. But often the reasons are technical and/or technological. And here, as always in the furniture industry, what we might call fashion or trend dictates.

In fashion is wood with a large surface area, uniform design, without knots and color variations

Nowadays it is fashionable for wood to be presented in large, uniformly patterned surfaces, without significant color variations and without knots (or with a minimum of knots here and there). If we were to categorize these aesthetic requirements into timber quality grades, they would be quite demanding even for a premium/ A+ timber. Think for a moment about an oak floor - one you would choose for a hypothetical new house, if your budget were generous enough. What catches your eye? It's most likely not the classic '60s 80×250 mm plank floor, laid piece by piece in a herringbone pattern, but wide planks, 200-300 mm wide, over a meter long, without alburn (white spots) and without knots.

What I can tell you with certainty is that that parquet can be made in one way - by applying a thick veneer, sometimes called blind, to a substrate (which can be very varied) and then cut into individual strips of parquet and fitted. The technical reasons for this are complex and will find their place in a future article, but certainly wide-plank flooring cannot be achieved in any other way than by layering, with the top layer being an aesthetic veneer. Of course flooring manufacturers will avoid using the name 'veneer' in the context of the wear layer, although technically it is correct, for the reason I touched on above - veneer has a bad reputation. The same trend can be seen in door production (where the classic frame and floating panel construction is increasingly losing ground, especially in interior doors, in favor of flat doors), wall cladding and, last but not least, furniture making.

Only by using furnishing can we bring furniture in line with current fashion

It is quite obvious that, in terms of furniture, both the carcase elements, but especially the fronts produced in the classic style with a four-frieze frame and a milled panel in the middle, have become somewhat anachronistic or increasingly associated with the rustic style. When customers ask for wooden fronts, they often imagine a wooden panel made up of a number of slats side by side, together forming a flat, striped surface.

Making such fronts out of solid wood poses serious problems. Of these I would mention just three:

• High loss of material if we want good or very good quality.
• Uneven appearance on more than one front. This is the case with kitchen furniture. Even if you procure lumber from the same log, it will not be in the same cut (tangentially, radially or somewhere in between).
• Fronts will change size and lose their flatness over time. This is the biggest problem technically. It happens because wood has seasonal shrinkage and swelling.

The obvious solution to this dilemma is to use veneers. There are a multitude of prefabricated tiles available, each with their own advantages, which can be veneered or can be bought ready-veneered. The most common option is the PAL or MDF veneered, which cuts and warps similarly to a melamine-faced chipboard, but requires the additional finishing step of sanding and applying a coat of film (usually varnish). They will have uniform grain, no knots and all the other drawbacks of solid wood paneling, especially warping problems.

Furnishing - the technique of choice for furniture artists

If we look a little further than factory veneered plates, we discover a whole territory of premium furniture where veneers rule the roost. Have you ever seen Pierre Renart's pieces that look like knotted ribbons? Or Aaron Poritz's tambour cabinets, which often combine wood with veneer and stone or metal? None of these marvels could be made exclusively from solid wood.

The veneer brings the texture and color of wood together with the possibility to be cut, jointed and curved, without the major drawbacks of solid wood. The common table top for example, starting with a MDF board, edged with solid wood and then veneered, can be reinvented almost infinitely, just by changing the placement of the veneers - from a simple, parallel arrangement, to bookmatch, sunburst, parquet patterns, inlay and so on.

So, properly chosen, glued and finished, veneers are much more than just the half-sister of solid wood, often representing the technically superior alternative. And in the right hands they can open up a wealth of creative possibilities that solid wood cannot offer.

Radu Vădan is a graduate of the Faculty of Informatics in Cluj-Napoca converted 7 years ago to carpentry. He has a workshop in Cluj, where he works only with wood and panel under the brand Imagine.Design.Make. He taught himself woodworking, from books bought in England and the USA or by watching video tutorials on Youtube. He has accumulated so much knowledge that he now shares what he knows with others. He is a certified trainer and regularly organizes free courses in his workshop. On specialty groups many rely on his advice. He always answers knowledgeably and urges others to do the same.

Last year, he decided to take it to the next stage and applied for funding through StartUp Nation. The project was approved and he made several purchases for his workshop: a large CNC, a calibrating machine, a veneering press and a circular. With the new machines, he plans to move from one-off products to a combined production of small series and customized work. All images accompanying the article are Radu's creations.