joining sheets of wood veneer?

i have a nice delivery of .6mm veneers, all aussie woods and intend on doing some classic longboard and fishes with it.

any reccomendations on joining the 1400mm x 200mm pieces together before lamination/vacuum bagging to the foam?

Go to the “WMD Compsand” post and ask the question. You will probably get all kinds of suggestions.

Cindy

The veneer I buy is already squared up.

So I just butt the two pieces together and put some (cheap) masking tape along

the gap on the outside and lightly paint epoxy on to the deck.

lay the veneer on to the board, get my alignment and then further tape that in place

so it is secured before going in to the bag.

once it comes out, you can peel the exterior tape off and then lam the outside.

Post some pictures of your boards when you’re done, please.

Use little pieces of paper adhesive (roll) to join the wood by the inside.

when you put the resin, the adhesive will be also impregnated in glue and you will not notice anything.

I have no idea if you have got your answer already, but I have a take on this…

I use a table and vacuum. No tape on the wood.

Lay the cloth down on top of a piece of 20mil plastic. This is 9 feet here.

This picture shows the top layer of cloth rolled back, the cloth, and the botom layer of plastic.

Ready to go, 360 grams of resin in the cup. The lines under the glass are written on the table, under the plastic. They help me know how far to spread the resin.

Here’s the resin all spread out on the cloth. The tail on this will wind up at 14.5 inches wide. I left myself two inches of slack here.

The wood is getting put down right on top of the laminated glass. If you miss by a bit and have to slide the piece together, it just fills the joint real full with resin, not a bad thing.

This shows the result of hand pressure joining. The resin is thick and the wood really doesn’t want to move much (did I mention I already trued the wood? See a thread by Benny1)

Here is the top layer of plastic half way unrolled. The thick plastic doesn’t wrinkle.

ready to pump down. The cloth acts as breather to distributre the air.

25 inches, crank it!

This was done a week ago, and the piece is still in the bag. I will save the unwrapping until tomorrow. This piece is intended for the deck of a new board. For bottom skins, I would then apply a thin layer of resin and bag the skin on. For decks, I use the glass on the outside as a form to prevent the wood from splitting (thanks WoodOgre for that tip). This way I also don’t have to glass the deck, it’s already done. Yes, I do get pinair. I find good results by squeeging the hot coat on. Greg L. has said the resin is aggresive, I agree. The surface tension does seem to fill those pinholes in pretty good.

Nice skins!

Here is my additional 2c.

The predone skins bend and conform to the deck side better freshly cured out of the bag while the epoxy is still rubbery.

For the gluing the skins to the board I add micro balloons to the epoxy to make a litter weight bough.

You can avoid some pinholes if you put down a thin layer of resin first and let it just start to set up and then add the glass, more resin, wood ect.

I have used tape and CA (super glue) to join the sheets of wood and like tape the best.

Bigger-wider veneer skins are less of a pain than balsa plank skins.

For heavier, stronger, waterproof, & nicer looking boards I do the outer lam by hand, way easier.

Have fun,

Scott, great pictures, informative post.

Do you mind sharing where you found that thick rollable plastic?

http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=256142;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;

This link explains how to avoid some pin air issues in balsa prefabbed skins.

Nice method. For balsa this looks great.

Hmm, Firefox works and IE is not…

I bought the plastic at TAP SKU-22640 Calendered Vinyl Sheting .020 x 54" Per Lineal Yd 5.95

I remember tha pinhole thread, I think that’s where I got many of my ideas

This pic shows how much resin soaked all the way thru the wood. I think this is a good thing, I have yet to achieve 100% soak.

soak thru

The skin is prett flexible

flexible

Here, I’m ready to cut the skin. I traced as shown by Burt. I use snips and gloves, fiber shards are sharp!

traced deck outline

We use narrow masking tape to hold the peices together. I’ve heard that some guys will use superglue.

If the edges don’t sit against each other perfectly, you can overlap them slightly, tape them together, then using a long straight edge, cut the wood with a sharp razor or utility knife. The edges should fit together perfectly.

We even use cheap thin masking tape to hold the veneers together and then lay the veneer tape side down on the blank. The tape is hidden beneath the veneer. With thin veneers, be sure to have a layer of glass between the wood and board. We usually use 2 oz.

We haven’t gone through the trouble of making a skin then bagging, we do it all at one time.

You may want to try scarf jointing. You would need to draw a line with a length of eight times the thickness from the edge you want to join. Then draw a diagonal line from the bottom edge of where you started your line to the top edge of where your line finished. That is the angle you want. If you have a planer with a bevel guide you may be able to use that to cut the angle in.

Thin like 1/4 inch? I’m a bit suspect on leaving tape on, but I’ve never tried either. Easy enough to test. I use 4oz cloth under, mostly because that’s what I have. This skin uses 1/16 inch balsa.

All cut out, ready to apply the deck skin

deck skin

Back in the bag. You can see some more work in progress in the back

Here’s where I had some cracks, right where the shiny is in the pic. They made a good noise when the bag started really working. No worries, these all sanded out to nothing. This is why I like to place the glass on the outside for the deck. The key is to have the resin saturate the wood and make it pliable for wrapping. I was still pleased with the over all result here.

skin cracks

Out of the bag, showing rail wrappage

skin wrappage

hey dude , dont finish shape the rails until the skins are on, leave them square and if you need to ad more rail material after the skins are on then do so. if you use thicker skins then you can have a bit to shape fair and round off over the rails. this gives a perfect straight join. this is neccesary to achieve showroom finish


also with skins as thick as your pictured you dont need to go to all the trouble and it achieves very little. tape them together and seal with inside with epoxy and microballoons, glass it a stick it on, i use balsa because it DOESNT readily absorb resin. to attemp to make it waterproof is a bit of a mystery to me . just use a waterproof wood it will be probably lighter

sealing the taped together planks first with thickend resin , then when you lam the inside the resin wont soak through the joints. if you have resin soaking through joints its impossibleto finish sand. if you cannot finish sand sheets then it will be difficult to get a perfect fair skin and thus a showroom finish… all little tricks

The 1.5 mm skins do not allow for much rail adjustment after being applied. I have not had problems with the resing soakin through and sandability. I’m really going for maximum fiber content ratio. By using the vacuum, all the joints get filled with resin, I’m not so sure I could achieve the same reliability by hand. I am also in no hurry to finish the board in the minimum amount of steps, otherwise I would do things differently. One thing I do know it is much easier to sand the the rails flush when the wood is on the outside.

Here is the same part of the rail that had cracks. I can’t see any now. I do see that I need to sand a bit better though.

The rail line is pretty smooth. You can see the under layer of fiberglass at the seam

And of course, chicks dig wood

LMAO! Nice board and nice… Friend :wink:

There’s the old fasioned way with lams too. Just sand a taper into the last inch, glue the next peice and sand that level. That way you get a feathered join.

But in compsand style boards I think butt joins under vac are the easiest way and I have never heard of anyone having a problem with them.

Edit: LMAO! Loving Paul’s new sig!