We received an enquiry from our customer Elizabeth regarding rimu veneer:
“I like this jewellery box very much but I see it is just a rimu veneer. What is the actual wood it is made of?”
From our artist Ian:
As for the rimu veneer board, some people have a perception that it is a cheap and nasty alternative to solid timber.
This is simply not the case, it’s a highly engineered product and in our case about three times the price of solid Rimu.
We use it for a number of reasons, the main one being it’s strength and stability. My design philosophy is all about lightness of touch, to achieve this we need to use thin materials. Anything to thick just looks to clunky and ham-fisted.
If we would use solid timber 6mm thick, it would simply warp buckle and break. The veneer board is absolutely rock solid and incredibly strong, try breaking a bit by hand, it’s virtually impossible.
Another reason is the yield we get from it. We can use 100% of a veneer board, there is no knots, shakes or splits to cut around.
Basically veneer is peeled or sliced from the log, processed and then glued and pressed on to a substrate, which is the bit in between the veneer, in our case MDF, which is pulped pine.
Source: Ian Blackwell, artist
And from our customer Elizabeth:
Hi Goina,
Thank you very much for investigating that for me. I did have the perception that veneer board was a cheap alternative and wasn’t even necessarily the sort of tree it claimed to be, but a look-alike one.
It’s also good to know that the substrate is NZ pine, not an imported wood with a large carbon footprint and which may have come from endangered forests.
I’m going to place an order for the jewellery box with the dragonflies. I’ll do that on your website.
Thank you to Ian also.
Kind regards,
Elizabeth (Liz) S.
