removing damaged veneer

It sounds like your table may have re-sawn veneer (rather than sliced) veneer. Such veneer was common up though the first half of the 20th Century, especially in mahogany. Such veneer was between 1/32 and 1/8" in thickness. Modern veneer will be as thin as 1/40" but fortunately, mahogany veneer still runs relatively thick form most suppliers. The second fortunate thing is that the veneer is probably attached with hide glue. If not hide it may be casein glue. If you dampen the veneer with wall paper remover (which is just a wetting agent that you add to water and adding a bit of denatured alcohol as well helps) and let it soak for a while the veneer should lift nicely after heating with a household iron. The iron should be warm but not hot. A low setting is what you want and many old texts suggest holding near the face to judge heat levels. Sounds funny but it actually works. The idea is to melt the hide glue. Even if it is casein the heat will help. I suggest doing a small section to test my suggestion.

Once the old veneer is removed flatten the resulting surface to joinery levels and apply new veneer by conventional methods. It should be added that veneer has to be done on both sides of a panel (such as your table top. On some very old furniture this was not done and warping is often the case. (The best Empire furniture was solid mahogany veneered with crotch mahogany.) If the veneer on the bottom side is o.k. leave it and just apply new to the top. Make sure to run the grain in the same direction as the bottom. If there is no veneer on the bottom side veneer both sides in the same direction as the original top veneer.

There is a plethora of "why and wherefore" dictating my answer to your question which is too involved for an email forum. If you run into any snafus don't hesitate to query me further. A digital photo is always helpful.

With best regards
Ernie Conover

Edited 1/15/2008 8:17 am ET by ErnieConover