Veneer Solid Wood

[rjent]

OK, I know the Veneer Solid wood is an oxymoron, but I don't know what else to call what I want to do.

I want to make a knife block to hold a couple of stainless Chef's knives. The block is a piece of cake and I know how i want to do it, BUT I would love to "veneer" the block with curly maple.

My plan is to make the block out of pine/fir then veneer the block with the Maple. Is this a good idea? As I was thinking this out, it occurred to me that "end grain" maple should be on each end of the block to make it look right. I can cut the Maple to do that, but will it work? Will it move together being different species? Etc. Etc.

Any advice would be appreciated ....

Thanks in advance! (even a "just don't do it" )

[Mike907]

I've never veneered before, but my first thought is that knife blocks are always around lots of water, so I don't know how the veneering will hold up.

Mike

[TomHoffman]

The way you learn is by trying.

Buying veneer is relatively inexpensive, however I would make the block body out of solid hard maple as well, why worry about a few bucks difference in price for maple V Pine. Solid maple is wonderful wood to work with. Some times when you go to buy hardwood, you can select boards from the stack that have outstanding figure in them from the beginning.

[TomHoffman]

Here is a pic of two items I made from solid wood that I got from a bulk wood purchase at different times.

This is Flame/tiger white Oak and Curly/Quilted/Fiddleback maple all in several pieces of the table top.

[BuckeyeDennis]

I've never heard of anyone veneering hardwood over softwood. But it's done over plywood all the time, which is not going to have the same shrinkage properties as solid hardwood either. I suppose the glue joint has to be strong enough to force the veneer to follow the growth/shrinkage of the substrate material.

So I agree with Tom Hoffman that using same-species hardwood for the substrate would be the conservative thing to do. But I expect that any wood with similar shrinkage ratios would probably work ok. Wood-database.com gives shrinkage ratios for a huge number of wood species.

Also, depending on how thick you resaw the figured veneer, you might think of the block as a figured-maple box, with a core added to guide the knife blades. Which could open up some different construction approaches. Regardless, I'd make the end-grain material thick, like an end-grain cutting board. Thin end-grain veneer just sounds impossibly fragile to work with.

[rjent]

Thank you Mike, Tom and Dennis. Dennis's thought's are in line with what I have been thinking, cutting pretty thick "Veneer" and very thick end grain. I am pretty sure I can "feather" the whole thing together where the "joints" won't show, or at least too bad.

And Tom, I totally agree with you about learning. Someone did the first dovetail, I can just imagine the discussions ....

OK, won't take much Maple to try, and as always I am learning something

Thanks guys. I will post the results. It will be a while as I have finally gotten my interior walls down and I am building the shop. But a person needs a break from time to time, hence the knife block.

[reible]

A whole knife block would not take much wood so I think you would be better off picking what wood you want and make it out of a solid block of that wood. If you wanted to make life easier cutting the wood into thin strips and gluing up to get the knife spaces would be pretty easy and then if you want special wood on the outer most sides it would not be a problem. Sort of like this:

ScreenHunter_140 Mar. 24 14.24.jpg (100.14 KiB) Viewed 8700 times

Anyway just a thought I had after reading your post.

Ed

[jsburger]

I made one a few years using exactly that technique. There are four rows of knives so I took five pieces. The knife slots were cut in one side of each piece on the router table. The piece on the back was added later when I bought a matching bread knife. It is made from solid hard maple.

[ERLover]

Just a thought, I do a lot of cooking, I hate knife blocks that sit on the counter taking up space in the area I work at. I made one that mounts on the underside of the upper cabinet near there, it is on a 3 or 4" Lazy Susann plate that allows me to swing it out of the way/turn 90*s so the handles are under the cabinet if I so desire.

[jsburger]

Just a thought, I do a lot of cooking, I hate knife blocks that sit on the counter taking up space in the area I work at. I made one that mounts on the underside of the upper cabinet near there, it is on a 3 or 4" Lazy Susann plate that allows me to swing it out of the way/turn 90*s so the handles are under the cabinet if I so desire.

That is a really interesting idea. I like it.