stopping thin wood splitting

[john d hamilton]

Have found a piece of plywood about 4 mm thick. It had been in the damp and the laminates ( each about 1 millimeter thick) have separated. The top veneer is a nice hard wood and is *very* thin at about a third of a millimeter and sticks fast (despite the others coming adrift in the damp) to another thin wood that is about half of millimeter thick.

This top piece ( the third millimeter top veneer and the half millimeter together ) i would like to cut into a rounded shape.

To avoid it splitting whilst I cut it to shape, ( I thought I would like to use scissors); is there anything you can advise a novice to do that will help with this?

Friends have suggested; more soaking in water, steaming in kettle steam, or hot water. Thanks for any advice.

[Puckdropper]

"john d hamilton" wrote in news:gbvg5f$oag$ [e-mail]:

*snip*

Try a test piece first, and see what you're up against. I'd suggest taping the cut lines and cutting through the tape. That'll hold the grain together better.

Make sure to use sharp scissors.

Puckdropper

[LEGEND65]

What the marquetry guys do is sandwich the veneer between two thin pieces of wood and use a very fine blade.

[Bored Borg]

I'm not guaranteeifyng this or nuffin', but you may get good results by cutting with the whole thing - wood and scissors together - completely under water. This dampens (!) out the high frequency "chatter" and lets the cut get all the energy. As you probably know, this is a great way of cutting acrylic or even thin glass so I suspect it'll work pretty well for _many_ veneer types and combinations, if not for your particular sample. Try it out on a "scrap" section as this will void your warranty wot I can't take responsibility for, hereafter and blah blah... standard disclaimer.

Good luck with it.

On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 10:33:19 +0100, john d hamilton wrote (in article ):