Yo T-Chisel, love the latest episodes. Sucks about the foot trasition piece, but hey at least it's fixable. I was browsing through a book the other day on furniture styles and saw some incredible pieces built in the mid 1800's with the doors and drawers covered with an exotic veneer and marquetry. I beleive nowadays we use good quality plywoods and MDF for a substrate underneath veneer. What did they use in the old days prior to the invention of these products?

i dont claim to know much about this one but ....here goes ...i think the subs back then were just like what i did on the sideboard doors and the breakfront doors too...i bought 8/4 flat sawn pine .or whatever i then ripped 1"pieces to rough dimension let them acclimate reflattened joint and rip so i had a bunch of 1 3/4 x 3/4 strips of 1/4 sawn strips ..i glued them all together so they equalled the rough dimension of the door sizes ..rechecked for flatness milled to 5/8 .then i glued a backer veneer cross grain to the strips ...then when i put the face veneers on they were cross the backer veneers...i am pretty sure this is the way it was done....anybody else know a bit about this....maybe neil...nah...he uses mdf...not for long!!!

OK so if I understand you properly, you essentially made your own quartersawn material out of a flatsawn pine board. Then glued up all the little pieces to make one bigger dimensionally stable panel. Brilliant! I don't imagine I'll be doing it anytime soon but it solves a question that's been rattling around in my head. Thanks man