VENEERING is the art of attaching thin sheets or leaves of wood, ivory, &c., to the surface of wood or other material of a less costly or less ornamental description. It is thus in connexion with wood, ivory, &c., equivalent to plating in the working of metals. The art is largely practised in cabinet-work. Veneers are either cut or sawn from solid blocks or planks. The ordinary veneer saw is a circular instrument of large diameter, made up of segments of thin steel bolted on a strong circular iron frame, which gives the requisite stiffness and rigidity to the saw edge. The teeth of the saw are minute and finely set, so as to waste as little as possible of the valuable material as sawdust. With such a saw from 8 to 16 leaves per inch may be cut out of a block of wood and as many as 30 leaves of ivory, one-third of the solid being reduced to sawdust. Veneers are also made from certain straightgrained and pliant woods with cutting tools, either by the process of planing or of turning. For these methods of veneer-making, the wood to be operated on is first reduced to blocks of a size equal to the cutting edges by which they are to be made into veneer, and are then steamed in a closed chamber to soften the fibre. In the plane veneercutting machines the block of wood may be stationary and the cutter movable, or vice versa, and the cutting edge is applied obliquely to the block. Immediately in front of the cutter pressure is applied to the block to keep the shaving from splitting up. With the planing machine from 100 to 150 veneer leaves can be cut from each inch of thickness. By the lathe-turning method continuous strips of veneer are obtained from circular blocks the width of the cutter, and it is possible to reduce the block till a core of about only 9 inches remains. In ...