Cabinet Veneer Techniques

I’ve built 3 different cabinets at this point, and my woodworking and equipment keeps getting better every year. My first was an MLTL a long time ago that was garbage, then I built a Dallas II that was - fine, and then I built a Pensil for my 10p and they turned out pretty good. Since then I’ve built a few pieces of solid wood furniture I managed to sell during COVID and I’m ready to turn the skills I’ve learned into a new set of cabinets. Considering the FHXL.

This time I want to lay a nice veneer down on the Baltic birch and was hoping for some pointers.

Generally I like to round over my corners to make the design look a little more finished and to take a little “weight” out of the design - but I’ve only ever done solid wood construction, and I’m wondering what the best way to deal with those rounded corners is if I wanted to add veneers.

I was considering painting the cabinets black, and leaving the black detail as part of the round over corners, while only veneering the straight parts of the panel. This would frame the wood veneer a bit.

Can anyone show me some designs they’ve done and what they prefer? I worry that veneering over the round over won’t look right, as a “real” round - over will reveal the grain in a different way than looking at it head on. I also worry that the black “framing” will look too rustic or unfinished.

I know you all on here have probably done a bunch of great stuff, so hoping someone can show me what’s up.

Pic of the last consoles i did to hopefully prove I’m not all thumbs, and to show you more or less how I design the stuff in my house. :)

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Kf-- I recently built a small bath vanity out of 19mm BB plywood and covered it with 'engineered' (fake) zebrawood veneer. The corners were square. I would guess that the veneer would work with rounded corners if the veneer was thin enough, the radius of the edge wasn't too small, and the radius was parallel to the veneer grain. With careful planning and cutting the edge banding could be cut so that the finished edge would have grain that was continuous with the face veneer giving that panel the appearance of being cut from a solid piece of wood. Also, I used veneer which required the application of a suitable adhesive--I rollered on contact cement. If/when I use veneer again I will use PSA (pressure-sensitive adhesive)-backed veneer--it would be quicker, easier to apply, the adhesive layer would be thin and uniform, and I wouldn't have to deal with the lingering glue fumes. I finished the piece with wipe-on polyurethane and was underwhelmed. If I were to do it again I'd use sanding sealer, then some grain filler, and finish it off with sprayed clear lacquer. I just refinished a pair of Theil CS floor-standers this way--MUCH quicker, easier, better looking.
 
Yes, thin paper backed veneers can generally be wrapped around a larger radius edge (in the long grain direction) but after several attempts, I gravitated more to a 45dg chamfer on the long edges and 90s on the cross grain direction. I personally found the iron-on method with regular yellow cabinet glue gave far more open work time, particularly when getting fussy with wrapping & matching grain patterns around either 4 or even all 6 sides of an enclosure.
 
A mother to work with, though; or at least when you’re using material that has been air dried for 10yrs. Needed very slow feed rates through thickness planer and sander to get to finish dimensions. Sapele, walnut and cherry were much easier to work with - mostly because I was a bit of a lazy hack as opposed to a real craftsman.
For some reason those thumbnails didn’t expand to full size. The left is clone of Tannoy Churchill, for 15” co-ax, and the right hand is PHY 8”; both commissioned for the late owner of a local hi-fi shop. The Tannoys were quite impressive, but the PHYs were incredibly underwhelming; at least in the “factory recommended” enclosure.
 

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ZUM; yup those shallow rebates are not quite deep enough for any flush trim bit I had at hand, so I simply cut them out with an Olfa heavy duty utility knife, held at a slight taper from 90dg. The blades have an angled point and are thin enough to fit into the smallest diameter driver or recessed terminal cup cut-out I ever used, and even the square corners of larger port slots.
Since I used an iron on veneering technique, the openings are easily delineated with a scorch line from the nose of the iron; which, along with the perimeters of those openings were easily sanded out with 150 -220G before applying finishes. For the thinner rectangular port slots on enclosures such as numerous Planet10 designs, a Nicholson handy file wrapped with PSA backed abrasive would tidy them up, as well as remove any glue that may creeped into the visible area of the slot.
None of this is “fine woodworking”, but it’s served well enough for hundreds of builds, with relatively few failures. The pattern layout for grain matching/wrapping and pre cutting of veneer could often take longer than the application itself.
 
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I don’t know how these guys did the rosewood veneer on these speakers that I designed for a customer. But it is flawless. It looks so good I couldn’t tell it was wood veneer until I looked at the grain under a microscope.

They look fabulous but you can hear how they sound here.
 

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