Easy Iron-On Veneer Applications
George VondriskaDescription
George Vondriska teaches you a quick and easy trick for iron-on veneer applications. This example involves applying veneer to MDF using a household iron and a recycled paper grocery bag. You can iron the veneer onto a substrate by painting both materials completely with yellow glue and then rubbing a hot iron over the veneer until all the bubbles and wrinkles are removed from the surface.
Titebond Original Wood Glue provided by Titebond. For more information, visit www.titebond.com.
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There are a variety of different ways that you can attach veneer to a substrate like this MDF. This is pretty cool, I've got these two book-matched pieces of walnut and I need to fasten them to the veneer here and I'd really rather not mess around with calls for a veneer press. Contact adhesive can be a little bit dicey to use for veneer. So I'm gonna do the whole thing with yellow glue. Pretty easy procedure. What I'm gonna do to start with is just bring my veneers together and then we'll have a look at how the glue gets used. As I work on this I'm just makin' sure that that seam is nice and closed. And this is just conventional masking tape I'm usin'. Now we're ready for the gluing step. And this is a little bit different maybe than what you'd normally done with yellow glue. What I'm gonna do is cover both surfaces by just painting the glue on. And then we're gonna stand here and watch glue dry. We're gonna let this yellow glue dry completely and then we'll be ready for the next step, which is where that household iron is gonna come into play. Same treatment on the back of the veneer. Now we'll let both surfaces get dry to the touch and then we'll be ready for the next step. The glue on both surfaces is dry to the touch now and the moisture from the glue got into the veneer and did a little bit of wrinkle dinkle there but I'm not worried about that 'cause we're gonna take care of that in the next step. One of the things that cool about this is that I can put these two surfaces together and they're just gonna lay there. Unlike with contact adhesive where as soon as I make contact these are gonna grab. So that gives me the opportunity to get the veneer over the substrate and get it where I want it and it's just kinda sittin' there. The next thing we gonna do is use that household iron in order to get everything to adhere. But we wanna protect the veneer. I'm gonna do that using a paper bag. All righty. Now, bag over the veneer, find the corner there and with the iron on it's hottest setting, we just start workin' this down and as I go I'm gonna get out any wrinkles that developed. The key to this is just keep workin' your way across and what I keep checkin' here is to see if I've got any wrinkles or bubbles under there that I want to work those out as I go, to get that veneer laid down, nice and flat. And just let the heat of the iron and a little bit of pressure from your hand do the work for ya. And as you come in and you start to inspect things. If you find you have a spot that's not adhered yet, just come back with the brown paper bag and the iron and hit it again. As a rule with the application of veneer, what we do is put it on oversize and then trim the veneer or trim the veneer and the substrate to get it down to the size you want. So let me peel this tape off here and you can really see how cool the book match of these two walnut veneer pieces is. And thanks to the yellow glue that we used to stick things together and the heat of a household iron, it was very easy to get these veneer pieces applied to my substrate.
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I started using the low cost plastic scrapers made by Richards sold at the big box stores who shall remain nameless. I found I can spread an even glue layer across large surfaces quickly and the benifit is that the scaper can be cleaned off and used again and again. I tried using severl different paint brush techniques but always found the glue was difficult to spread. Any thoughts on my method good or bad?
Is this method viable for larger panels, like 18"x40"? And, separately, would you suggest this method if using burl veneer?
I'm sure there must be a maximum drying time before the ability to reconstitute the adhesion is lost. I'm thinking this technique would help me with my refacing kitchen cabinets project. What might be a maximum drying time?