Producing Wood Veneers
The finest and rarest logs are sent to companies that produce veneer. The advantage to this practice is twofold. First, it provides the most financial gain to the owner of the log. Secondly, and of more importance to the woodworker, it greatly expands the amount of usable wood. While a log used for solid lumber is cut into thick pieces, usually no thinner than 1 1/8 inches (3 cm), veneers are cut as thin as 1/40 of an inch (0.6mm). Depending on the cutting process used by the veneer manufacturer, very little wood is wasted by the saw blade thickness, known as the saw kerf. Accordingly the yield of a rare grain pattern or wood type is greatly increased, in turn placing less stress on the resource. Some manufacturers even use a very wide knife to "slice off" the thin veneer pieces. In this way, none of the wood is wasted. The slices of veneer are always kept in the order in which they are cut from the log and are often sold this way.
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Famous quotes containing the words producing and/or wood:
“What ails it, intrinsically, is a dearth of intellectual audacity and of aesthetic passion. Running through it, and characterizing the work of almost every man and woman producing it, there is an unescapable suggestion of the old Puritan suspicion of the fine arts as such—of the doctrine that they offer fit asylum for good citizens only when some ulterior and superior purpose is carried into them.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 23:31.