Selecting Veneers

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The
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Marquetry

SELECTING YOUR VENEERS

Many people ask for guidance on the ‘conventional’ veneers to use for certain purposes. For these creators, we list the answers we give to the questions which are most commonly asked:

Skies	Aspen Avodire Sycamore Cherry Pine Ash Primavera Grey Harewoods / Blue Harewoods (if 'blue' is required)
Seas	Castello Olive Ash Harewoods
Light Colours	Sycamore Lime Horse Chestnut Holly (not easy to get, but worth it)
Dark Colours	Ebony (inclined to be sappy and hard to cut) Wenge Dark Walnuts Dyed Black
Strong natural colours	Afara (straw colour) Ayan (yellow) Opepe (orange) Peartree (pink) Paduak (red) Purpleheart (speaks for itself)
For trees	All burrs, in particular: Walnut burr Imboia
For green	Myrtle burr Magnolia Both are greenish tinged, rather than strong green colours
Traditional Crossbanding veneers for furniture	Satinwood Quarter cut Rosewoods Sapele Kingwood Tulipwood
Borders	Sapele Sycamore Straight grained Walnuts (usually European or African) Afrormosia

The above veneers are used for normal picture borders and all but sycamore are suitable for crossbanded borders.

If you require more detailed information we strongly recommend you to invest in a specialised marquetry book.

Storage of Veneers

Veneers suffer in extremes of temperature and humidity therefore care should be taken with your collection of veneers.

Always store them flat and in a cool dry place. The stackable cardboard trays used for fruit from supermarkets are very good for this purpose. By using these boxes you can divide your woods into colours which will reduce handling and reduce possible damage.

If a veneer buckles it will have to be dampened and pressed between sheets of paper in a screw press.

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