TUTORIAL:

SPLICING TWO VENEER SHEETS

In order to cover a significant area with veneers, you may have to put the sheets together.

To do so, here is a tutorial that will give you some simple tricks.

There is of course other splicing methods. The one below seems to us to be the simplest and easiest to achieve.

Necessary items:

•  Gummed or adhesive non-embossed paper. The advantage of gummed paper is that it is possible to sand it once the veneers are glued on the substrate.

It is even possible, in some cases, to leave the paper on as it will be hidden between the substrate and veneers. Adhesive paper remains a good alternative, though.

•  A box cutter.

•  A metal riglet or an aluminium ruler.

1/ Take the two veneer sheets you want to splice.

2/ Set up the two sheets. Different types of splicing are possible.

Slipmatch: the two sheets are "slipped" one alongside the other, with successive repeating grain.

Bookmatch: the sheets are turned over like the pages in a book. This will give an aesthetical "mirror image" pattern.

3/ Have one sheet overlap the other by about 1cm, or in some cases more if you want to get rid off of a minor defect on the edge of the sheet.

4/ With the adhesive paper, tape the two overlapping sheets to prevent them from moving when cutting.

5/ With the riglet and cutter, cut the two sheets where they are overlapping. Ideally, this will help keep the aesthetical "mirror pattern".

6/ Once they are cut, put away the scraps.

7/ Put the sheets side against side. They will fit perfectly, even if cutting would not have been made in a perfect straight line.

8/ With the adhesive paper, splice the sheets.

9/ Your two sheets are spliced and ready to be glued.

Advice:

•  As wood dimensions are sensitive to temperature and hydrometry variations, the best would be to "air-condition" the veneers before splicing. To do so, let the veneers rest a few days (3 days at least) in the room where you will work on them. It will enable the spliced sheets to be stable until they are glued on the substrate.

•  It is preferable, especially if putting together and gluing are done in an unheated room (for example, in a garage), to do the splicing at the last moment and to glue the veneers the same day. This will prevent the splicing to open or overlap depending on the weather conditions.

Of course, once the veneers are glued on the substrate, there should not be any splicing problem.

HAVE FUN !