How to make birch veneer flexible. How do-it-yourself veneering is done - technology and step-by-step instructions. Do-it-yourself veneering: gluing

Those who make repairs with their own hands should take a closer look at such material as veneer. It is a thin layer of wood, that is, completely natural material.

It is classified into the following types:

standard: made from walnut, oak, cherry and other tree species,
special: varieties of rare and valuable tree species are used for production,
root cuts unsuitable for furniture production tree species, but with an interesting pattern and texture (for example, eucalyptus or myrtle),
exclusive: characterized by a non-standard texture or size.

The material can be peeled, sawn and planed. The latter has more value and practicality, and it is he who is used most often in the furniture industry.

Most often glued on MDF veneer, for example, on wall or facade panels. Doors made of natural veneer also look stylish.

This material has an aesthetically attractive appearance, it can be glued to any wooden surfaces. At the same time, the price of the material is quite affordable, therefore, without any special financial costs, you can transform the interior of an apartment or a country house.

Veneer benefits include:

durability,
moisture resistance,
environmental friendliness,
strength.

It should be noted affordable price this material with high aesthetic qualities and practicality. That is why it is chosen for finishing furniture, doors and other interior items at home.

Let's figure out how to properly glue the veneer so that it lasts you a long time, and the surface acquires a new beautiful color.

RELATED VIDEO

When working with veneer, it is important to carefully prepare the surface. If it is coniferous material, remove the resin with a knife and work off the area with acetone.

It is also necessary to remove any knots and irregularities, get rid of greasy stains, chips and cracks. To obtain a smooth surface, it is ground and primed.

Many are interested how to glue veneer on chipboard or plywood. Easiest to work with flat surfaces, for example, a coffee table without ledges and other curly elements.

To finish it with veneer, you will need:

sheet of white paper,
iron,
thin cutter,
sandpaper,
glue,
wooden block.

Pick up several sheets of plywood in width and length, preferably with a small margin. The veneer can be simple and figured. In the first case, the fibers are arranged in parallel, in the second, the pattern is more diverse, and you can experiment with it.

Apply a thin, even layer of glue to the tabletop and veneer sheets.

Put the sheet of material in the right place and smooth it with a heated iron. In order not to burn through the veneer, use a white sheet of paper as an interlayer between the material and the iron.

Iron the heated place with a wooden bar.

Lay the next sheet slightly overlapped and repeat the procedure. Excess material is carefully cut off.

It is important not to overexpose the glue while it dries, as it quickly loses its properties.

After finishing gluing, make sure that there are no air bubbles by tapping the surface. If they remain, cut them with a thin cutter, if necessary, pour in a little glue and heat again with an iron.

VIDEO

the color of veneer sheets should be matched to the color of wallpaper, furniture and other interior elements,
veneer sheets joined together look original different breeds trees,
if you decide to pre-paint the sheets, after painting, rinse them with running water and dry them in a warm place, but not near heaters.

Thus following simple algorithm, you can quickly, easily and inexpensively give a second life to many things in the house, as well as realize your design ideas.

-> How to make veneer at home

Veneer is a very thin sheet of wood, the thickness of which can vary from 0.1 to 12 mm. For industrial purposes, veneer is often made from precious woods such as oak, ash, beech, walnut, mahogany and others. But if you need veneer for personal purposes in small volumes, for example, for aircraft modeling, then you can read how veneer is made at home, and if you have a tool, do it yourself. In this article, we want to talk about how to make veneer with your own hands.

How to make veneer at home

The easiest way to get yourself a few veneer sheets is to "disassemble" a sheet of plywood. put plywood sheet into a container with hot water for 2-3 hours, maintaining a high temperature throughout the soaking period, and then cut the plywood into layers with a well-sharpened knife. Immediately after this, you need to put the resulting veneer plates under the press to maintain a flat surface.

At home, you can even make sawn veneer, but get ready that this work will take a lot of time and effort. All you need is a prepared timber (not necessarily an elite tree, an ordinary maple, birch is also suitable), a pencil, a ruler, a workbench and good jigsaw, preferably with a set of interchangeable canvases in reserve. Fix the workpiece in the workbench and draw it vertically in increments of 10-12 mm (thicker is impractical, and if thinner, it will be very difficult to cut). Take a jigsaw in your hands and cut the veneer layer by layer along the lines.

How to make veneer if there is a planer at home. Sliced veneer is made from the same timber as sawn veneer, with the only difference being that thinner plates can be made. But the medal also has back side- it is difficult to make plates of the same thickness with a mechanical planer. Well, if you have an electric planer with a layer thickness regulator, then the task is much easier. Firmly fix the timber in the workbench and remove the veneer, remembering to use a pressure ruler or beam. If you have access to a lathe or other woodworking machines, then the process of obtaining veneer is no different from the industrial one. How to make veneer suitable for further use? It must be sanded, depending on the purpose of manufacture, coated with waterproof solutions or varnished.

Alas, foreigners are right: whole trees go to us for firewood, but we learned how to make furniture from sawdust. Well, at least many enterprises have switched to finishing these products using veneer. Products began to look richer. Veneer has always been an ornament wooden products. Finishing with the help of combinations of veneer from various breeds tree.

So, let's look at how veneer is made.

Veneer is usually called a thin wooden plate. make them different ways, consider the three main ones: sawing, planing and peeling.

In any case, for the production of veneer you will need:

drying chamber;
equipment for determining the moisture content of wood;
equipment for the direct production of veneer (depending on the method of production of the material).

Stages, materials and technology of the production process

So, it is necessary to initially soak the wood for some time in water (the time depends on the density of the wood and its initial state) and steam it.

Soaking and steaming is necessary to give the wood the same physical properties throughout the volume.

Otherwise, you risk ruining the interior of the wood or even making the equipment unusable. Next comes the drying process. drying chamber. The natural drying of wood will not give the uniformity that you were striving for. Insufficiently dry wood is not used in the production of veneer, since in this case the rejection rate is very high.

The moisture content of wood can also be checked in a handicraft way using a laboratory hygrometer. To do this, a small section of wood is sawn and a thermometer is placed in the sawdust. The second thermometer remains open. Humidity is determined by the difference in the readings of thermometers and using the table. This method is not entirely reliable, because it gives very noticeable deviations from real results.

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Sawing the finished material

Sawing veneer is similar to sawing ordinary board. But the requirements for the sawmill are much stricter: very precise adjustment of the cutting planes is required, the wood feed rate is much lower than usual. The veneer is even, smooth, practically does not require refinement. Band sawmills for this method of production of veneer is quite suitable. Only one thing needs to be taken into account: about 60% of wood inevitably turns into sawdust. Let's call it a payment for the quality of veneer, but when using precious woods, this method of production is not used. High-quality material obtained by sawing is always used for the production of expensive goods. They inlaid furniture. Decks of musical instruments are made from the same veneer.

The veneer obtained by sawing, for a certain time, must still “ripen” in a darkened room, where a certain humidity is maintained. In mass production, the resulting veneer is kept under pressure for a short time. This is not a superfluous procedure, since after sawing the wood can be heated, and the process of moisture evaporation will accelerate. This can cause various distortions and bends. It is better to play it safe and avoid damage to the material by placing it under the press.

It is much easier to get veneer by planing. Do not be alarmed: it was only in the Middle Ages that veneer was cut with a planer from regular board. At present, everything is much more technologically advanced: a block of wood (namely, a block!) Is fixedly fixed on a workbench, and a wide sharp knife removes a layer of a given thickness.

Here is your veneer. The hardware requirements are the same: very fine tuning, low speed filing. The knife must have a certain sharpening angle, which is selected depending on the thickness of the required veneer and the density of the wood. Such veneer is very often used for the production of plywood. For plywood to be of high quality, the veneer must be of the same quality. True, this rule is often abandoned in production in favor of the quantity of goods produced. At the same time, it is completely forgotten that at the final stage the plywood is pressed, which means that the veneer is subjected to a rather impressive load. With its low quality, ordinary cracking occurs.

Most versatile and easy to handle building material considered plywood. Despite the not very low cost, popularity and demand for it is growing every day more and more. Unlike wood, plywood is lighter, but the advantage over fiberboard and chipboard is obvious - environmental friendliness.

wood plywood It is made by gluing together very thin sheets of wood (veneer). This material is easily amenable to various processing, both thermal and mechanical, it can be painted with paints and varnishes of any kind. It is worth noting that plywood harmonizes very well with any other material, which designers successfully use. Veneer, otherwise popularly called plywood, has the following characteristics:

It has a layered woody structure.
For the production of material, veneer sheets with a thickness of 2-4 mm are used, as a result, the thickness of a plywood sheet can reach from 4 to 32 mm.
Quality construction plywood depends on the type of veneer, which is natural and tinted. Natural veneer is more durable, stronger, environmentally friendly and safer.
It has very good thermal conductivity and environmental friendliness, which is superior to chipboard, fiberboard and MDF.
The ratio of performance indicators and the cost of production for plywood is higher than metal or plastic.
It has a fairly small weight, easily tolerates temperature changes.

Plywood classification

Depending on the characteristics, plywood of any hardness differs in terms of service life, appearance, types and grades:

As intended, it happens:

construction plywood - used in the construction of houses as ceilings and partitions;
industrial plywood - for ship, wagon and auto construction;
packaging plywood - used for packaging of overall products, the same furniture, electronic engineering and another;
furniture plywood - home and office furniture is made from it;
structural plywood - used to create various designs, decorations and expositions.

Depending on the number of layers of veneer, plywood can be:

three-layer;
five-layer;
multilayer.

In order for the veneer sheets to be arranged symmetrically with respect to the central sheet, they are taken in an odd number. In the case when the number of veneers is even, it is necessary to glue the two central sheets perpendicular to the two outer ones, this will increase the strength and resistance to deformation. The thicker the plywood sheet, the more expensive it is, respectively.

There are three types of plywood:

moisture resistant plywood (FC) - relative moisture resistance, since even in rooms with not very high humidity can lead her. It is actively used in the manufacture of furniture and packaging material;
increased moisture resistance (FSF) - due to its good resistance to moisture, it is used not only for internal works but also external. This type plywood is well bent, easily amenable to other processing - drilling, grinding, planing, sawing, perfectly painted and varnished. Many builders note that working with this material is a great pleasure;
increased moisture resistance melamine (FKM) - melamine or bakelite glue is used in the manufacture. This type of plywood has a popular name - marine plywood. It is used for shipbuilding, aircraft building, mechanical engineering, it does not sink in water, it has good resistance to most aggressive environments. FCM is also different in that it can withstand more than 100 stains.

Plywood processing can be laminated or conventional.
Depending on the material from which the veneer is made, plywood can be:

birch - less in demand due to its high cost;
coniferous plywood - made from larch, pine, fir, spruce;
plywood from Siberian cedar - used mainly for decoration purposes.

Depending on the number of defects that can be identified by outward signs, plywood can be of several classes:

E class (elite plywood) - production of plywood without any defects, except for small changes in the structure of the tree itself;
I - a defect of no more than 20 mm in length is allowed;
II - a defect is allowed no more than 2% of total area material;
III - a defect in the form of cracks is allowed no more than 10 pieces per square meter. m., the area of \u200b\u200bwhich can be up to 6 mm;
Class IV - very low quality plywood with cracks from 40 mm.

Depending on the surface treatment, plywood can be:

unpolished (NSh);
plywood sanded on one side only (SH1);
polished on both sides (Sh2).

The polished surface lends itself better to processing, it has good adhesion with varnishes and paints, so this plywood is more expensive and it is customary to use it for decoration. Unsanded plywood is more often used for hidden work, its price is low compared to sanded plywood.

Do-it-yourself plywood manufacturing technology

Today, plywood can be purchased at every hardware store. But many lovers of doing everything on their own are interested in how to make plywood with their own hands. It turns out that this is possible. To make plywood, you will need veneer, you can also make it yourself.

Veneer making at home

The veneer is divided into three types:

Natural - veneer that has the natural color and structure of wood. It is made by sawing, peeling and planing thin layers. It is important to preserve the wood structure. Eco-friendly material, very light.
Colored veneer is the same natural veneer, only dyed in different colors.
Fine-line - obtained after the reconstruction of the old peeled veneer, which is formed into blocks, and from them, in turn, veneer is made. He can have any color scheme, drawing and dimensions as in natural wood.

Depending on the manufacturing method, it happens:

Sawn veneer is the thickest material of all types, obtained in the process of sawing.
Sliced veneer - obtained in the process of planing wooden blocks.
Peeled veneer - produced using a veneer peeling mechanism.

Tools for the job

For the manufacture of veneer, and later plywood from it, you will need next material and tool:

wood (birch, pine, spruce), which you can purchase at a specialized store or woodworking factory;
veneer mechanism for the production of peeled veneer;
sawmill for the manufacture of sawn veneer;
planer for the manufacture of sliced veneer;
grinder;
grinding machine;
presses of "cold and hot method";
drying chamber;
phenol-formaldehyde resin as an adhesive and components to it;
pencil;
varnish or paint.

Veneer manufacturing steps:

The first thing to do is to select raw materials (wood). Prefer birch or pine, in extreme cases, spruce, or use it to combine plywood. Birch is a more durable material, while pine and spruce are lighter.
Prepare the wood for work - peel it from the bark and saw it into 1 m long bars using a grinder.
Draw the workpiece vertically.
Using the veneer peeler, peel off the veneers of the thickness you need. If you are making sliced veneer, then you need to use a planer, and for sawn veneer, a sawmill is useful.
Cut the veneer into desired blanks.
Dry the veneer in a drying chamber with adjustable humidity.
Sort the dried veneer and discard.
Then dried veneer good quality can be ennobled, and it is recommended to cut and glue the rejected one in order to obtain a sheet of the desired size.

Assembly of plywood

Finished veneer sheets can be assembled into packages:

Apply glue to both sides of the veneer and bundle the sheets together.
Send packages under cold press.
Glue the veneer packs into plywood sheets using a hot press. Do not forget that the number of veneer sheets must be odd, they must be joined so that the fibers of the sheets to be glued are perpendicular to each other.
Now you can cut the plywood sheets to the size you need.
Sand the plywood with grinding machine so that the surface is perfectly smooth.
Finished plywood can be decorated with paint or varnished.

How to bend plywood

In some cases, such as when making furniture, you may need to bent plywood. It is possible to bend it at home. The easiest way to do this is with flexible plywood, the thickness of which does not exceed 3-4 mm. Flexible plywood can be purchased at the store. But you can bend plywood of any thickness, but first you need to make an accurate calculation of plywood - in which specific place you will bend it.

The process consists of the following steps:

Steaming. In production conditions, this is done in special installations and then bent under pressure. At home, you can steam plywood sheets in the bathroom or in other containers. The thicker the material, the longer it must be kept in water. The minimum time is 15 minutes, the maximum is 5 hours. The water temperature should be 90-100°C. But, as you understand, it is quite difficult to implement at home, and not cheap. You can replace steaming by soaking in warm and cold water, while the process time increases for cold water 15-30°C by 20 times, for warm water 60°C by 1.5-2 times. After steaming, the plywood sheets must be bent and fixed so that they dry completely in this position. To speed up and facilitate the process, you can only moisten the surface of the plywood, and steam out the place of the planned bend.
Notching. The method is suitable for plywood with a thickness of 15-24 mm. Using a cutter, you need to make small cuts (no deeper than half the thickness of the sheet) at the places of the planned bend. It is this method that is used in the construction of boats. The incised workpiece is bent, another sheet of veneer is glued onto it and fixed. In this position, plywood should be at least a day.
Gluing. This method helps to create a rounded part. Cut pieces 5 mm longer than desired length. Arrange the parts on the table in such a way that finished product the directions of the veneer alternated, this is necessary for greater strength of the plywood. Glue all the parts together and fix them on the workpiece of the shape you need. When your part is dry, sand it and remove excess glue.

Before you start working on bending plywood, read the following useful information:

Transverse fibers are more difficult to bend than longitudinal ones.
The humidity of the premises where you plan to store bent plywood sheets should be low - no more than 10%.
Steamed and soaked blanks are easier to bend in a warm state.
The thicker the plywood, the harder it is to bend.
It is easier to bend plywood, in which the layers of veneer are parallel to each other.
Do not overexpose the plywood in water, it may delaminate. To find out exact time required for steaming plywood of a specific thickness, you can use an experimental blank. Soak it and check the condition every 3-5 minutes.
It is still recommended to bend very complex and voluminous structures in specialized workshops.

Plywood coloring

For more long service life, plywood must be painted or varnished. This is especially true of the material that is used outside.

Stages painting works with plywood:

The first step is to sand the plywood. For this, skin No. 80 is used.
After that, the plywood is covered with an acrylic primer and aged for at least 4 hours.
If necessary, the surface is puttied with wood putty.
After the putty has dried, the surface is rubbed again with sandpaper No. 80-100.
Another coat of primer is applied and aged for 4 hours.
And the final stage will be the coloring of plywood itself.

Having become familiar with how plywood is made, how it is bent and painted, you can build not only arches and partitions in the apartment and in the country, but even make and decorate furniture yourself.

How to make plywood with your own hands. Video

When building models, it is often necessary to use veneer of various thicknesses. Usually the desired thickness is obtained by grinding with the help of a fungus with a skin glued on the end, inserted into the cartridge drilling machine. This method is the most affordable, but it has a number of disadvantages: low productivity, the inability to process veneer with a thickness of less than 0.5 mm, because due to the rotation of the fungus, the veneer breaks out of hands and breaks, and, finally, the main disadvantage is high air pollution with wood dust . It is not possible to process more than three or four plates even in a respirator.

All these shortcomings are deprived of the grinding machine designed by me, which works on the principle of counter milling. It was made (with the exception of welding work) in an aircraft modeling laboratory. There are no scarce parts and materials in its design.
All units of the machine are mounted on a base, which is a parallelepiped with dimensions of 200x265x340 mm, welded from steel corners 40x40x4 mm. In addition, two brackets made of channel No. 8 are welded to the base for fastening the drum bearing housings.
The drum (the main working body) and its pulley are cast. The material used was aluminum alloy AL-25, from which the pistons of automobile engines are made. The pistons are melted in a muffle furnace and then cast into a sand mold. The holes in the drum for the swivel bolt-clamp of the skin and the counterweight bolt must be drilled symmetrically about its axis. By the way, the mass of the first (together with the "dog" latch) and the mass of the second should be equal. Otherwise, vibration will occur as a result of unbalance, which will lead to premature wear of the bearings and affect the performance of the machine.

Bearing housings are welded. The final size for bearings in housings is bored after welding. The drum is driven by a V-belt transmission from an electric motor with a power of at least 300 W, with a speed of three to five thousand revolutions per minute, with a sufficiently large starting torque, since the drum has a fairly decent mass, despite the fact that it is made from aluminum alloy. Collector motors meet this requirement. I used a motor from a household electric polisher on the machine.

Fundamentally important in the design of the grinding machine I propose is the presence of a suction system for air polluted with sawdust and wood dust. This system makes the machine environmentally friendly and more "comfortable" during operation, as it allows you to do without a respirator. For suction of sawdust, a centrifugal fan-supercharger of the car interior heating system is used, which is installed on the threaded end of the drum axis. Such a “vacuum cleaner” is not inferior in performance to a household unit.
The fan shroud is attached to the bearing bracket with wing screws, allowing it to be quickly removed when it becomes necessary to replace the worn skin. A bag made of dense fabric is put on the discharge pipe to collect sawdust. The suction opening of the fan casing is connected to the cavity of the drum casing by means of a branch pipe. The branch pipe is glued out of fiberglass on a foam blank, which is then melted with acetone. The cavity of the drum casing is formed by two concentric shells welded to the end plates-flanges. The inner one can be welded with an intermittent seam, and the outer one must be continuous, in order to avoid pressure losses. The distance between the shells is selected from the condition that the area of the suction opening of the fan casing is equal to the area of the two slots formed by the shells. The sawdust ejected by the drum during grinding is sucked into the front slot, and the sawdust, which are captured by the sandpaper and thrown out, is sucked into the back slot. centrifugal force drum.

The casings of the drum and belt drive and the sheathing of the base of the machine are made of steel sheet 1.5 mm thick. The axis of the drum is machined from steel 30, and the rest of the parts from steel 10.

The operation of filling the skins is simple and quite clearly shown in the figure. The tension of the skin is carried out with the help of a “dog” lever, put on the square part of the rotary bolt-clamp of the skin and fixed in one of five positions.
The table is made of 10 mm thick steel sheet and has dimensions of 180x350 mm. His working surface should be smooth, if possible polished on a surface grinder. The table, hinged on the base, is raised and lowered with the help of an adjusting bolt, which makes it possible to obtain veneer with a thickness of 0.3 to 30 mm. The required size is set according to the ruler screwed to the base. The ruler is graduated using measuring bars clamped between the drum and the table.
The good performance of the machine is eloquently evidenced by the fact that in one pass you can remove “chips” up to 1.5 mm thick.