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What is Wood Veneer

There are many types of wood veneer, but this is the basics.

What is wood veneer?

Wood veneer is a thin layer of wood that is usually applied over another material (called a substrate). The origin of slicing thin sheets of wood into veneers was to conserve the more precious woods.

Getting the most out of expensive wood is still one of the most common reasons to make veneers to this day, although there are other applications of slicing wood into thin sheets, such as glueing veneers together to make plywood.

What is the average veneer thickness?

Wood veneer is typically 1/16th of an inch thick, ranging all the way down to 1/64th of an inch thick.

The thinnest veneers will be used in manufactured inexpensive furniture, whereas the thicker veneers will be used by woodworkers to make higher grade custom furniture pieces.

What kinds of wood can be made into veneers?

Any type of wood can be cut into veneers. Common wood such as oak, maple, birch, or cherry will be cut into veneers to be incorporated into commercial manufactured furniture.

More expensive woods such as mahagony or wood burls will be sliced into veneers and used in higher end custom made furniture.

How is wood veneer made?

There are various ways to make wood veneer. The most common way is to rotate a log over an extremely sharp blade and thus peeling the entire log into one log thin sheet, called a rotary cut.

There are many different ways to cut wood to make veneer, and each way will yield a different grain pattern.

How is more attractive veneer made?

To achieve a grain pattern that is appealing, the log is sliced in various directions to achieve a different grain pattern. A common type of slice is 'through and through' which means that it is sliced along the length of the log, keeping the slices in order.

Veneers Pictured Above:
Mottled Bubinga - Lacewood