Surface roughness of thin wood veneers sliced from laminated green wood lumber

Freshly-felled Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolate), Masson Pine (Pinus massoniana) and Camphor Tree (Cinnamomum camphora) logs were reconstituted to form laminated lumber with moisture content above fiber saturation point by slicing, finger-jointing, gluing, and cold-pressing processes. The laminated lumber was then sliced into wood veneers, which were air-dried to about 15% moisture content. The surface roughness of the veneer was tested in comparison with two commercial engineered wood veneers using a stylus tracing method. The influence of  the wood surface roughness was relatively  small  for  the  wood  species chosen due  to  their  similar densities. All roughness parameter values were consistently larger along the transverse direction compared with these along longitudinal direction. The values of surface roughness at the finger-joint region were higher than these that at the non-finger-joint region along both longitudinal direction and transverse direction. The two engineered wood veneers had surface roughness values noticeably smaller in the longitudinal direction, but their values in transverse direction were comparable and even larger compared with these of the prepared wood veneers including both non-finger-joint and finger-joint regions.  Overall, the process of laminating finger-jointed green wood planks and subsequently slicing can be used to yield acceptable wood veneers with sufficient surface quality