"As design professionals come to understand the manufacturing process and become more familiar with, and better understand, what can be achieved through veneer profile wrapping and laminating we, as manufacturers, are gratified by the greater sense of creativity that ultimately results," says Peter McKibbin, Vice President, Contact Industries, an Oregon-based profile wrapping and laminating concern. "Many of the products manufacturers have developed are a direct result of specific design or product requirements initially created by and requested by a design team. After the design intent is discussed, it becomes very much a matter of executing on the principals' product vision."

Profile wrapping manufacturers can get as many as 50 sheets of veneer from a single clear block of lumber. Photo courtesy of Contact Industries

 

Over the years, the creativity of design professionals has resulted in all manner of new products that, in addition to pushing the design envelope, are more robust from an engineering perspective, easier to handle, more sustainable, generate less job site waste and, very often, are more cost effective.

“As the architectural community becomes more aware of the inherent benefits of profile wrapping and flat lamination,” McKibbin said, “designers are increasingly becoming conscious of the role they play in ensuring these technologies are applied by specifying their use in construction documents.

“Because the technologies are new relative to the general use of solid wood products, the specification factor is often overlooked.”

Manufacturers alone can go only so far in developing technologies and product advances that can have beneficial effects on sustainability efforts. These technologies are often useless without those in the design community understanding their benefits and specifying them for use in the building they design. Too often, more harmful traditional building practices are carried out because the design team failed to specify where new technologies and products should be applied.

This article will cover some of the product and design possibilities that can be achieved with veneer profile wrapping and laminating, describe the advantages and limitations of the process methods and highlight the steps involved in the process itself.

Veneer Profile Wrapping and Lamination - The Basics

The process of veneer profile wrapping has evolved over the last three decades from adhering vinyl overlays to traditional moulding patterns to the specification of a hundred plus of types species of veneers, profile wrapped on a wide variety of substrates of all shapes and substances.

Today, there are two primary types of veneer application techniques: 1) Profile wrapping, which is a lineal manufacturing process; and 2) flat lamination, a more traditional batch process.

Manufacturers note that with today's advanced technology and materials, both types of veneered product processes offer design professionals greater opportunity to better and more sustainably manage the volume of clear lumber consumed when designing mouldings and millwork.

Veneered components are often superior in performance to the solid woods they replace in terms of lower installed cost, and aesthetic standards, with minimal impact on the fiber resource environment.

Resource Efficiency. By using high-value veneer only on the visible surfaces and lower-grade, sustainable fingerjoint or composite material for a substrate, profile wrapping manufacturers can extend the solid, clear wood resources by as much as 50 times.

Traditionally, a solid clear blank of 5/4 hardwood lumber might make a single moulding profile. However, with today’s sophisticated veneer slicing process technology manufacturers can generate as many as 50 identical finished products from that very same single slicing blank - hence the ‘extension’ of the resource.

This is achieved by slicing thin veneers (.013 to .015 of an inch), and wrapping those veneers over a profile moulded from lower-grade, sustainably produced finger-jointed pine or other readily available specified substrate.

Veneer can be made even more efficient and aesthetically pleasing by a process that finger joints the pieces back together to create long rolls of clear veneer. Additionally, in this process veneer can be color- and grain-matched, making the finger joints virtually impossible to notice.

Veneer wrapped solutions can also mean lighter shipments, easier racking, more dimensionally stable finished products and access to a wide variety of clear, long-length, solid products that, from flooring transitions and stair rails, to mouldings and tongue and groove paneling, maximize valuable lumber resources.