INGENUITY AND LUXURY . 



this manner imitations of valuable furniture may be 

 made at comparatively small cost. It should not 

 be understood, however, that all veneering is done 

 for purposes of deception, or that the wood over which 

 a veneer is placed is always of inferior quality. Some 

 of the best solid mahogany furniture is made with 

 veneered surfaces, this being done because it is fre- 

 quently possible to obtain more beautiful effects of 

 the grain by using the veneer than by simply polishing 

 the surface of the solid wood with the grain exposed 

 as it appears in the tree itself. In such cases a thin 

 veneer of beautifully grained mahogany is glued to the 

 underlying mahogany wood, this veneering being some- 

 times scarcely thicker than a sheet of paper. 



Two methods are used in preparing wood for ve- 

 neering, one by sawing the timber into thin plates, 

 the other by slicing it with knives. By the sawing 

 method it is possible to obtain a somewhat better 

 grade of veneer on account of the position of the grain. 

 The older method of sawing was done by hand, the 

 successive layers being removed one at a time, but the 

 modern method is to cut several layers at once by 

 means of thin saws placed in parallel close to- 

 gether. In both of these methods there is a waste 

 of wood corresponding to the thickness of the saw 

 which is sometimes thicker than the veneer itself; and 

 as this process is relatively slow it is not used except 

 for making the highest grade of veneer. 



A more economical and rapid process is the method 

 of slicing by turning off continuous layers from logs 

 in mammoth lathes. In cutting by this method the 



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