Veneer for Dummy Woodworkers (Carpentry Week 6)

Resawing wood veneer

The first step in getting the right answer to a question is understanding the question itself. You aren't likely to be able to truly address a question like, "Why did Roger Maris have an asterisk next to his 61?" if you don't know who Roger Maris was, what an asterisk is, the significance of the number 61 to Maris or, for that matter, why the numbers 154 and 162 are significant. Deficiencies in basic knowledge like that are a consistent problem with eHow.com's "answers." Too often they've been written, or more likely reworded, by someone who didn't understand the original question; not that the questions scraped off search engines by the eHow bot always made sense in the first place. Perhaps even worse, eHow contributors like Larry Parr (already featured once this week...) are expected to decide what the original questioner meant when searching, which isn't necessarily conducive to an accurate answer. Here's an example, Larry's take on "How to Cut Wood Veneer."¹

Remember, we said that eHow contributors like Larry get to interpret the questions they "claim" (there was even a member forum in which they could request "title clarification" from other eHowians, most of whom were equally clueless): we put this same question to the Antisocial Network's designated staff woodworker, and he started talking about bandsaws and resaw guides: it seems that he interpreted the question to mean, "How do you cut a sheet of wood veneer"; not how do you size and trim veneer sheets. In other words, Larry took the easy way out (collecting his fifteen bucks as he left, for whatever that's worth). Parr, as one might expect, was able to find some online instructions for cutting veneer to size and -- for the most part -- did a reasonable cut-reword-paste job (clearly, that's a critical skill for anyone who wants to write for Demand Media):

"Carefully mark where you want the veneer cut, being slightly generous in your measurements since it is generally best to cut your veneer just slightly too large and then trim it to the precise size after it is glued in place."

Hmmmm.... this must be an old entry, since "Carefully" isn't one of DMS's all-holy action verbs. Once this part is finished, however, Larry's lack of knowledge about the topic gets pretty damned obvious.

"Lay your T-square or tri-square on your veneer so that your knife blade will cut just outside of your marked line.When cutting with the grain, be especially careful to keep your knife firmly against your T- or tri-square..."

Use a tri square (not hyphenated, by the way, Larry)? Really? Wouldn't you want something, we dunno, perfectly flat? Well, in case you don't know, a tri square (or try square) has a stock that's thicker than the blade. We'd suggest using a metal straightedge or a framing square instead of a try square... And then Parr really gets lost with the final step in applying veneer, trimming back the overhang at the edges:

"...[this space intentionally left blank]..."

That's right: though he mentions trimming the edges of the veneer, he doesn't address the critical step of cleaning up the edges at all! Well, Larry may not know how to trim the veneer, but our staff woodworker does! He says that you cut the veneer slightly larger than the surface, glue it down (some commercial veneer is self-stick) so it overhangs the edge very slightly in all directions, and let the glue dry. Once it's dry, you trim the overhang back to the edges with a flush trim bit mounted in a router. Larry apparently didn't know any of that -- if he did, he should have mentioned it, since it's an integral part of trimming the veneer. In other words, he answered the wrong question, got part of the answer he did provide wrong, and left out a critical step. Is there any wonder that we think Larry deserves yet another Dumbass of the Day award? No? We didn't think so...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. The URL was  ehow.com/how_2302927_cut-wood-veneer.html

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