veneer over stained cedar

 

I’m thinking about including some veneer onlays on a stained stripped deck. Because the veneer will be under the fiberglass I’m concerned with creating a nice flat layup with the veneer and would ordinarily weigh the veneer down with cauls, etc. However, I’m concerned that cleaning up any glue spillout will muck up the stain on the cedar beneath. I’m thinking I could:

  • ·         Rely on very flat veneer and work without a caul/weights so any glue runout can be cleaned up with a damp rag before setting up.
  • ·         Use cauls/clamps, but use epoxy as my veneer glue so any runout will (I’m guessing) disappear when the whole thing is epoxied as part of the glass layup.

 

Any advice?

 

Thanks,

Patrick


6 replies:

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RE: veneer over stained cedar

First, did you use water or alcohol based stains on the cedar (which is what you should use) and not oil based? If so I'd make a test strip and see what happens when you wipe the glue off of it. If no color wipes off you're in good shape to use water based glues. I use white carpenters glue for all my veneers. It has a pretty quick set time, wipes up easily and dries clear if you miss a bit. If some color does wipe off I'd switch to the epoxy. The main problems with it is the stuff is slippery as snot for a while and it's hard to get things to stay exactly where you want them till the stuff sets up. You can use small straight pins to hold the veneer in place then get your weights/cauls on it for a couple of hours. I also sand the veneers around the edges as much as possible without going thru to get the best transition for the cloth to go over. After a couple of fill coats people will think it's an inlay. I've actually had people argue with me about mine!

George K

RE: veneer over stained cedar

Hi George,

Haven't stained the wood yet, but I'm planning to use the Behlen stain reccomended on this site.

I'm antsy about removing the pressout residue (after the clamps are removed) without sanding through the stain on the cedar substrate.

But it sounds like your experience is that after placing the onlay, pressing everything flat, and wiping down any initial exess glue, no additional glue presses out upon clamping? Is that right?

You mentioned white glue drying transparent- that's what made me wonder about using epoxy. I'm assuming any epoxy that seeps out from under the clamped-down onlay will vanish later on. But is epoxy lousy to work with as a veneer glue?

Maybe I'm overthinking this. Just trying to stay two steps ahead of my own silly mistakes!

Thanks,

Patrick

RE: veneer over stained cedar

I recently read that if you coat the back of the onlay with wood glue and let it dry, you can place the onlay and reactivate the glue with a hot iron.  If the surface that the onlay is going onto is fairly flat, this might be way to adhere the onlay without excess glue.  

 

I’ve been trying to find the original article, but I haven’t been able to find it this evening.  I did find the following:

 

http://www.webherrera.com/blog/2009/04/19/titebonds-franklin-internationals-iron-on-instructions/

 

 Mike

RE: veneer over stained cedar

Patrick,

You're right, after the initial squeeze out and clean up usually nothing else comes out. Epoxy works but it's just not as user friendly as far as keeping things lined up, as I mentioned earlier. And Mike mentions the old Titebond glue trick, has to be the yellow type and I've never tried it. Just make sure you get the wife's iron cleaned up before you sneak it back into the house. With any of the methods it would be best if you tried them out on some scraps ahead of time. Then you'll know what works best for you. Don't overthink too much, just enjoy the process! And there's nothing you can do that can't be fixed.

George K

RE: veneer over stained cedar

Thanks for the replies, and the reassurance. I've got lots of thinking to do before I have to pull the trigger on this one. This will be an all cedar strip Kaholo. Maybe I'll be too enamored with the look of the board to add anything!

And I wised up long ago and got my own iron just for shop projects!

Thanks agian,

Patrick

RE: veneer over stained cedar

I used the hot iron method to put bubinga veneer pieces on a wood duck deck and coaming lip.  I used a product called Heat Lock since I was doing a large surface, but there are many online articles with detailed information using PVA glues (e.g. white glue, Titebond).  The general idea is that you apply a coat of the glue to both the substrate and the back of the veneer, let dry (dry time varies with glue type) and then iron on (iron heat setting also varies with glue type).  It worked pretty well for the large area I was veneering (better on coaming lip which was smaller), probably would work great for a small onlay.  If you use this method, make sure:  1)  You apply a good, even coat of glue on both onlay and deck; and 2) you iron over entire veneer surface well to get it all heated evenly.  Test adhesion after it cools - you can re-iron if needed.

The advantage to this method is there's no squeeze-out.  I would also consider using epoxy if I were putting an onlay on a stained deck; any squeeze-out would be the resin you'd be applying anyway so you wouldn't have to worry about glue clean-up either. 

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