Wood veneering a dash

[chodosh]

I have a couple of classic Mini’s with burr walnut dash’s. 

For one car I have a centre console and centre arm rest made of MDF and I would like to take the vinyl off and veneer it...

1. Any tips for first time rookie - seems people either use contact adhesive or pva type. Sandwich the wood and leave to bond. Easy right? 

2. Finishing is the question.... do I have to stain the veneer and do you get different colour stains or simply continue to apply multiple coats until I reach the dark brown colour I need? Then I lacquer it? 

Also if I have 1” thick mdf I will need to butt up the veneer to cover the front, top and bottom faces. Any tips here? 

Cheers 

 

 

[angusb]

Hi,

 Beautiful Mini!

 I am Titanically bad with  wood work, seem to remember seeing Wheeler Dealer Episode, veneer first "leafed" to match pattern. Glued,placed in vacuum bag overnight.

[Roy M]

There's an article on the web about an amateur restoration of a Tr6 dashboard which gives a good guide - I can search for it later today.

[Roy M]

Easier than I thought - http://www.buckeyetriumphs.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/How-to-re-veneer-your-dashboard..pdf

[Henry]

I re verneered a Gt6 dash about 30 years ago , I used cascamite glue . Main thing is to clamp well some verneers can be quite uneven so usepaper and some layers of cloth that can take up any irregularities and insure even clamping over whole face .  Holes out later of course . 

[chodosh]

I didn’t think to dampen the veneer and clamp it first. Will head to the boot sale on the weekend and get a bunch of record clamps... just ordered a few sheets of veneer off of fleabay. Luckily I’m only interested in doing a couple of small pieces  so should avoid having joins which seem tricky. 

A lot of the articles talk about urethane and all these american type substrates so i’ll Just need to figure out what the stuff is called over here. 

I think I’ll give some gorilla wood glue a try on some test pieces first. I can imagine with contact adhesive I’d struggle to get it smooth and spray glue seems to deteriorate. 

Sounds like a fun project though. Looking forward to it 

[mean in green]

Query the idea of PVA for this - as it’s affected by moisture.

Contact or PU seems better.

PU ironically requires moisture to cure, many of them like Gorilla etc. foam out more than you might expect so definitely do a couple of test pieces and mask anything you don’t want it to touch as it’s hard to get off.

Wear gloves too. I think it’s only aced by expanding foam in it’s ability to stain skin!