A NEW OR IMPROVED VENEERING PRESS
Year: 1877

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Thomas Forrest at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents on the 2nd March 1877.
THOMAS FORREST, of Glasgow, in the County of Lanark, North Britain, Engineer.
"A NEW OR IMPROVED VENEERING PRESS."
This Invention has reference essentially to a greatly improved and more systematic
and substantial construction of screw press for the compressing or laying on of
veneers on the surface of cabinet work and furniture while the veneers are heated,
as usual, by thin zinc or other metal plates or "cauls" warmed or heated by ordinary
close steam or hot air heating boxes or vessels, or plates over heating stoves or flues,
which improved press will be more easily and expeditiously worked, and will lay on
or compress far more veneer at each operation, and in a more efficient manner, with
less expenditure of time and labour than the veneer presses heretofore in use.
The nature and novelty of the Invention consist in forming a strong cast-iron
horizontal table, plate, or frame, planed on the top, with deep edge and transverse
and longitudinal feathers below for strength, bolted to the top of two or more
strong supporting transverse open frames or standards at a proper height for the
men laying the work on the flat top of the table, and preferably open enough at the
lower part of the standards to have the close steam or other warming box or flue
plate for the laying and heating of the long wide warming sheets or plates over
each other in a pile all ready to be easily drawn out and laid on the veneers to
warm them.
The said planed pressing table is made long enough and wide enough for the
largest general work to be veneered (as about eight feet long by two feet six or
eight inches wide I find to suit well), and has mounted over it one, two, three, or
more strong vertical screw spindles (according to the length of the press, three
suiting the size of press here mentioned), each working down through a deep
screwed bush or eye in the centre of a strong transverse cross head, secured at their
ends to the top of wrought-iron or other standards secured below to deep eyes or
snugs on the sides of the pressing table. The lower end of each screw carries a
square or rectangular pressing plate, planed flat on the under side, with strengthening,
angled, and cross feather and deep central eye fitted with pressing plate or bush and
collar, by which the screw carries and raises and lowers the flat pressing plate,
which is guided in its up-and-down motion by snugs at its edges working in a

page_text: parallel part of the pillars carrying the cross head. These upper pressing plates are
about the same width as the table below them, and they are of a length to nearly
reach to each other, leaving sufficient clearance, between them across the centre
between the standards as not to touch each other, and at the same time to cover the
whole table, so that when they are all screwed down by a spoked hand fly wheel
mounted on the top of each screw spindle, the work with the veneer temporarily
glued on, and a hot-plate, as before stated, laid on the veneer to warm it and melt
the glue, is evenly and regularly compressed between the top of the table plate and
the under side of the top plates, powerfully pressed down by the turning of the
hand fly wheels and screws, and left thus until the glue has set and the work cooled
and dried, all otherwise as in the ordinary veneer pressing machines.
It will be seen that any number of fronts, tops, and frames of pieces of furniture
may be thus laid over each other, and have the veneers laid or pressed in this new
or improved construction of screw press at the same time and nearly as quickly as
one set, preferably, when possible, laving the veneers laid face to face, so that the
one hot-plate laid between two thicknesses would heat both at once.