Thread: Making a veneer cold press

Arron,
an interesting Victorian era press.

its amazingly robust, though we need to remember that Victorian veneers were probably 1 or 2 mms thick, so probably were not easy to press down compared to today's standard of 0.64mm.

Arron

Originally Posted by Arron

its amazingly robust, though we need to remember that Victorian veneers were probably 1 or 2 mms thick, so probably were not easy to press down compared to today's standard of 0.64mm.

Arron

The largest veneer mill in the Southern Hemisphere was Henry Alcock's situated in Russell Street in Melbourne which produced veneer in 3/64" and 5/64" thicknesses. From the Vicky stuff I've seen here and elsewhere in the world, someone else had the capability of producing much thinner stuff.

Hi Arron, here's a few pic's that I have posted before (in other threads but relative to this thread) of my cold press, it didn't start out as a press rather the rough steel bench was somewhere to store the three flat solid panels that I pickep up at an auction. These ought to be good for something

These panels are solid (mdf) read as heavy, the weight of the panel alone is nearly enough on its own to transfer glue to the veneer but for a bit extra squeeze I use 5 cauls in a length of about 1.2m, I'd have to make up some more cauls and clamps to apply the same squeeze if I were to do longer panels. the cauls are 65x35 (most likely bluegum that I machined up from some old house studs) I put a curve into them of about 3mm at the outer ends, the btm ones are straight and I only squeeze the clamps up until I have taken out the curve, any more and the middle starts to loose the sqeezing effect, any extra is then only applied to the edges, based on my results so far I see that this setup supplies adequate force and panels come out as flat as the panels and no bubbles, WW is right on with having the veneer flat to begin with.

It also packs away quick as the btm cauls stay where they are and then the top cauls just slide into the space where the btm cauls live, some spacer blocks are placed inbetween top and btm panels then the top is lowered down to become a bench/place to put stuff (temporarily of course)
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Pete

Hi. This is version 2 of the veneer press. As the top platten was split into two I decided to work on just one end and get it going before doing the other.

This version works very well. I've done a couple of test runs and they came out spot on. The screws press from above so they have been moved towards the centre, which gets rid of all those problems caused by trying to create an even pressure across a flat surface when you are only able to apply pressure at the very sides. Also, the screws now work intuitively (clockwise to do up) and there are no stress points as they are now mounted as they were designed to be used.

As you can see, I've loosely attached the top platten to the bottom of the press cauls. This means when I raise the screws, the platten comes up with them. The platten can still slide out though when I need to clean it. It takes less then a minute to fully do up the press, or undo it and retrieve the workpiece. As convenience was a major driver, these things are all good.

Best of all is that it takes very little pressure to work. I dont have a reliable way to measure the pressure I'm using, but its tiny compared to the pressure I was using with the portable presses, or the previous version.

I think I'm very close to success now.

cheers
Arron

That should work well now.

I came across this image this morning during a totally unrelated search...

Originally Posted by Woodwould

..........the only 'press' I had was a bundle of goberges with which I veneered everything .

As an interesting aside, the same technique is widely used in the instrument building fraternity, for gluing down braces, and tops and backs on guitars. An array of dowels or fibre-glass battens are used.There they are referred to as "go-bar" decks

regards

It's easy to see how go-bars derived from the French goberges (pronounced GO-bairj).