Now, on to my second attempt at wrapping the metal brackets in veneer (at this point let me just say that if you have ever met, or ever meet, a jeweler, not the guy/gal at the counter but rather the one who actually makes the jewelry, take a look at their hands/fingers, they are probably discolored and covered in cut callouses, mine are approaching that right now from these brackets, but I think it was worth it).
Per
@GD70 Glenn's feedback mentioning how he does it now, the first change I made was to give heat lock glue a chance (I bought more edge banding that had it pre-applied, however this is absolutely what I will use in the future until I can justify buying vacuum press equipment). I have to admit that I was extremely skeptical. In my experience, any time there is an "iron on" version of something made, it is typically not as good as other methods of attachment, and simply doesn't look as good or work as well since it is usually designed with the non-tool-friendly in mind (think iron on lettering, patches, etc). My expectations were that the results would be akin to using hot glue as opposed to the correct adhesive for something. When it comes to heat lock, I could not be any more wrong about that. Holy crap I could not be any more wrong about that. Suffice to say that this stuff truly inspires confidence, and at a far greater magnitude than the contact cement I had been using. When heated thoroughly and properly (very, very important, as if it is not heated hot enough it will still stick to things, and seem like it is working, but then later pop right off) this stuff will stick to practically anything, and form an incredibly strong bond, that is to say that the substrates on which the glue is applied will likely fail (with the exception of metal, but even in that case, which is something I did test, the glue split rather than ripping clean off of the metal) before the glue does, this includes ripping off the top layer of skin on your fingers, needless to say I give heat lock my stamp of approval, and will be switching to that for the next veneering project I do. That is all without mentioning probably the best part, which is that it allows you to do "real veneering" with raw wood as Glenn mentioned. In addition I found it to be far easier to repair mistakes as well. Yes, I am pretty excited about heat lock, but I should definitely mention that, like the other methods I have used so far, it absolutely has its caveats, and really getting good results took some serious practice.
The second change that I made was in prepping the brackets. The stock brackets are coated (not sure what they used) and pretty smooth and well protected, so my first attempts were done while trying to maintain the integrity of that coating. Due to the previously-mentioned difficulties with the edges, and inconsistencies from one bracket to another, I decided to grind them all down to a more or less uniform flatness. This was done first all by hand with files and sandpaper, then for the rest I very carefully used an angle grinder to do the bulk of the work then finished with files and sandpaper. As the angle grinder left some significant edge burring I also ground flat the wide faces as well. Doing all of this made veneering the narrow edges so much easier.
The third major change was in the species of wood that I used. I wanted something that would contrast better, but not look too out of place, I ended up going for a wood that I have deliberately ignored thus far since it is so commonly used on vintage gear: walnut.
The fourth, and final big change I made for this second attempt was in the tools and techniques that I used for manipulating the wood. I needed a better solution to bending the wood around those super tight radii. I will start by saying that I don't like what most veneer softeners are made of (a lot of glue in there) so I ruled those out as an option immediately. The second method I tried (actually used this a bit on my first attempt) that had a degree of success was using saliva. Yes, you read that correctly, saliva, spit, right from my mouth. I had a hypothesis about this potentially working, especially due to the myriad of enzymes contained in saliva that begin breaking down and digesting food before you swallow it. Now I am no chemist or biologist, so I cannot say for sure if those enzymes are the reason why this worked, but I will say that I did have success with this method. It was for other obvious reasons that I decided against it e.g. I shouldn't be licking this stuff it will probably give me cancer, tongue splinters, and so forth. The third, final, and most successful way that I settled on is one that was in the back of my head the whole time: steam. I have used steam on past restoration projects, one in particular where it really stood out was in de-warping maple runners of an old toboggan. For that project I makeshift set up a rig using a lot of towels, a wallpaper steamer, and a ton of metal weights, and it actually produced great results. The "official" or "proper" way to do this with steam is to use a steam chamber that you place the wood in and apply the steam under pressure, but I don't have access to one of those. Actually I don't currently own a wallpaper steamer either, but what I do own is a fancy high end Ladybug steam cleaner capable of putting out a jet of steam at around 300 degrees F at around 70psi. This just so happened to work incredibly well, the photos will speak to this.
Anyway, speaking of photos, here they are:
