Veneer a curved panel

Interesting question! I have done quite a bit of curved veneer work on furniture but never anything this big. Which means that what I'm about to say is a semi-educated guess.

I think a lot would depend on how tight a radius you're working with. If the radius is pretty big and the curve is fairly gentle, you could probably get away with veneering the panel while it's flat. Chances are that the veneer would compress enough, and the contact adhesive would give enough, that it would work OK. On the other hand, if you're dealing with a relatively small radius and a pretty tight curve, I would not assume that I could veneer the panel flat and still get it to conform to the radius. For a smaller radius/tighter curve, I would veneer the panel after it's installed.

I assume you will be using paper-backed veneer and contact adhesive, which are probably good choices for this project.

Good luck and post pictures!

you have to veneer it when the shape is finalized. The veneer will either buckle or break if you bend the wood after the fact....

To what radius? I bend 1/4" 3 ply plywood to as small as a 20 inch radius with no difficulty at all. But it must be 3 ply, and you have to cut it on the easier bending axis of the wood.

The outer skin of flexible plywood splits along the grain when it bends. You could probably force your veneer to do the same, but I doubt you would be pleased with the appearance.

That being said, you could be correct that the thin paper-backed veneer would not keep a pre-veneered panel from conforming to your radius. Unless you're lucky enough to find someone who has done this before -- which I don't think any of us has -- you aren't going to know whether it will work until you try it.

Could you do a test with a smaller section? Maybe cut a 2-foot section of the flexible plywood and veneer it on the flat, and then see what it does when you try to push it up into the vault framing.

This will certainly be cool when you get it to work, but it's an ambitious project!

That radius is a snap with 3 ply 3/8". But even four ply makes it considerably more difficult.