Older manufacturers used a hardwood core under the veneer, such as oak, gumwood, fruitwood, or poplar. A few cheaper manufacturers used plywood as a core.
Sides/Bottom
If there is a veneer, you will be able to look at it from the side and see where the sheet of veneer attaches to the front of the piece. Also, if you see unfinished wood underneath the furniture, it's probably wood and not laminate which tends to cover the furniture from top to bottom.
The core of veneer furniture is made of a variety of materials, such as MDF and particleboard. These materials are lighter than solid wood and rely on glue and chemicals for strength. While this construction makes them a lower quality, it does make the furniture lighter for moving or rearranging.
If the finish is really thick, you may want to do another coat of stripper. Since the veneer is very thin, you want to sand as little as possible. The stripper is used for removing the finish and stain – the sanding is just to smooth the any scratches. Using 150 grit sandpaper sand in the direction of the veneer grain.
If you just feel a smooth surface and not the ridges and raisings of a natural grain, it is most likely veneer. Look for discrepancies in the grain. If you notice that the surface of the piece is has the same grain pattern across all sides, chances are it's veneer.
Plywood is a type of manufactured wood panel that's made by gluing veneers together. The layers are glued with the wood grain of the plies at right angles to each other. Veneers are the thin slices of wood that can be peeled off and they're usually less than ⅛ inch thick.
Can You Sand Veneer? As you might expect, veneered pieces are very delicate and require careful sanding to avoid irreversible damage. If you sand veneer too much, you may render it unusable.
Look at the grain pattern. The texture of the grain determines what kind of wood it is. A wood has an open, porous texture. Softwoods are usually smooth with no grain pattern while hardwood usually has an open pore structure that is quite rough and sticky.
A sure way to recognize wood laminate is when the grain does NOT follow through your piece. Wood Veneer is a sheet or thin layer of 'quality-natural-hardwood' that is adhered to a lesser quality wood surface. Wood Veneers give the impression of a more desired quality wood without being as costly.
Xylorix Inspector is an automated macroscopic wood identification mobile app. Given the 24x magnified anatomical visual information of the cross section (end-grain) of a timber, Xylorix Inspector uses its trained artificial intelligence models to identify the timber genus/species in a few seconds.
Design Deviations. Natural veneers are sliced from tree logs that each have a unique pattern. No two trees, even from the same species, have identical patterns. On the other hand, engineered wood veneers are man-made sheets that are sliced, dyed in vats, and glued together in blocks.
Hardwood plywood – Made from hardwood, often from birch and used for demanding end uses. Birch plywood has excellent strength, stiffness and resistance. Tropical plywood - Made from mixed species of tropical wood. Veneer, on the other hand, refers to thin slices of wood that are practically peeled of the wood.
Some veneer-finished furniture can release toxic vapors. Veneer is a very thin layer of wood attached to particle board to create the look of solid wood, but the result contains sawdust and many adhesives (including toxic ones).
The face veneers of plywood are very thin—1/30 of an inch, on average. This can make plywood hard to cut without splintering, and doesn't leave much after sanding. Plywood is heavier than solid stock and more susceptible to water damage, which could be problematic for some applications.
The standard thickness is 0.6 mm. Most frequently used wood types are also available as a thick veneer. Veneer retains the natural look and feel of real wood as well as its unique properties, showing authentic colour and pattern variations.
Wood veneers are thin sheets of wood, used to lend an elegant finish to various types of furniture, such as beds, cupboards, cabinets, and wall panels.
Wood veneer is inherently more expensive than laminate for a number of reasons... Fundamentally, this is primarily due to wood veneer being a naturally made product, whereas laminate is a man-made product. Ultimately, anything that can be 'mass produced' is usually going to be cheaper!
Oak veneer
A veneered product is made out of thin, decorative slices of high quality oak, affixed to a lower density core that will resist warping and moisture and therefore offer a good value alternative to solid oak.
Not known to all, Veneers are available in wide range of exotic and domestic panels with variety of cores. Years ago, veneer was classified into 2 categories only i.e. flat cut and quarter cut. Today there are around 70,000 different woods out of which only 200 species are available commercially as veneers.
Conclusion: Chemical stripping is your better option for a veneered piece. If you have sanded veneer and feel comfortable doing, it can certainly be done, just be patient, start at 100 or 120 rather than a 60 or 80 grit. Don't press hard with the sander, let it do the work. Check your paper for finish build up.
Veneered furniture can be refinished like other wood furniture, as long as the veneer is not too thin, and you take care not to remove too much of the veneer when removing the old finish.
Veneer is a decorative wood layer that's overlaid on a different surface. Veneer can be primed, painted, stained, and treated just like any other wood surface. Painting veneer surfaces is a great way to spruce up furniture, make older pieces look newer, or make an original piece match a new décor scheme.