There are 2 main characteristics that determine the appearance of a wood veneer sheet.  The first is the way the log is actually cut and the other is how the sheet is put together, either one big sheet or separate smaller leaves that are spliced together.

There are several ways of cutting a log to produce the thin wood veneer.  One of the more common ways is called "rotary cut".  This type of cut is achieved by placing the log in a spinning lathe and allowing a long blade to move into the log, thus pealing it like a roll of toilet paper.  The veneer comes off of the log in one long sheet.  This sheet is then cut to length, usually 8 or 10 feet long, leaving a wood veneer sheet that is 4x8 or 4x10.  When this wood veneer is used in it's full form, it is referred to as a "rotary cut, whole piece face".


Though it is slightly more common to cut the original piece to size and use each sheet as a whole piece, there are other ways of creating sheets of these sizes made out of smaller pieces put together. This method is called "rotary cut, spliced face" and allows the mill to cut out defects of the long sheets of wood and splice the best remaining parts together to form a full sheet.  This is probably the least expensive way of producing full sheets of veneer wood.


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