Cody,
Thank you. You are very kind. I am only an amature woodworker. I guess the only quality I had to learn the most was PATIENCE. Also, that old saying "the best way to predict your future is to create it" is a pretty wise one to employ in woodworking and other areas of life. You must do a lot of sacrificial testing with your wood products and especially finishes before proceeding, then you know what the outcome will most likely be. Then you begin to get a little experienced and it even gets easier and faster. Accuracy first, then speed comes later as you get more experienced.
That is a Carter guide system on my Powermatic 14 in. Bandsaw. Tuning up and adjusting your bandsaw before cutting your good wood is critical. A sharp blade is essential. I use 1/2 in. 3-4 TPI Carter (among other good ones), with table adjusted exactly perpendicular to the blade and fence adjusted exactly parallel to the "drift" of the blade as you feed your wood into the cut. This gives a uniform cut vertically up and down, and horizontally end to end as you feed it through. Again, when your scrap test piece cuts perfect, then you know your good stuff following will also. Sharp planer blade are also essential. Planers always plane parallel to the control side which is down. So you always have one control side finished flat on the jointer or otherwise prepared. Then the top cutting blades plane flat in reference to it. The thin cleat in my planer sled is on the front to keep the veneer in place as it is being pushed through. I also use double sided carpet tape to hold the veneer down on the sled. Depending on the quality of the planer and stability of the wood, I found my equipments limitation to be about 1/4 to 1/8 inch. Many good woodworkers even cut their veneer on the bandsaw a lot thinner than I do. Do it if you can, especially on highly figured more expensive wood. Some skip the planer and finish on a wide bed sander which works very well if you have one ($'s). There are a lot of good woodworker on the forum doing some wonderful things with their (commercial) veneer especially if you are working with and covering curved surfaces. Thinner is essential for than application. It would be more of a challenge to cut longer wood thin stock pieces for the floor standing speakers at 40 some ins. long X 4 sides compared to my 18 in. enclosures, but I believe it could be done. Also, the edge jointing of the veneer to get a tight fit side to side it important. After matching my pieces, I edge jointed them on my jointer. Others have done the same with a hand plane in a shooting jig with the hand plane laying on it's side. I then tape them tightly together as shown in the pics. then crack them open on the backside to glue together. I chose common superglue from the box store for quick drying and clear color, but have never used this as wood glue before, so could not tell you the long term effect, but it worked very well and hid the joined seam very nicely. Hope this helps your understanding of the process that I went through and I am sure that there are many acceptable variations that work as well.
