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I recently ordered some nice 1/4 sawn honduran mahogany veneer to use for side and back purfling. I tried cutting strips of it yesterday and am having a terrible time. It wants to split and follow the grain and I'm wondering if the problem is that it is 1/4 sawn. Is it easier to cut strips from flat sawn veneer? Even if I start very lightly scoring it with a very sharp blade it does the same thing. I have never had trouble cutting purfling strips before with a VERY HEAVY straight edge and sharp blade. I know there are other methods, but my question is really whether it's not good to use 1/4 sawn. I guess for side purfling that needs to get bent sideways flatsawn makes more sense. If flatsawn is easier I will order that tomorrow. Thanks, Wendy

If you want the 4sawn face to show on your guitar you should buy flatsawn veneer.
The way I cut veneer sheets, purflings and bindings is to jig up the table saw and use a 40 or 60T Diablo blade. More waste than cutting with a knife, but worth it.
First set the fence to the exact width (or rather height in this case) you need and try with pieces of scrap. You need an absolute zero clearance slot, and the best way is to lower the blade and clamp a flat piece of ply or MDF on the table and jammed against the fence (joint the side that goes against the fence). Then raise the blade through the ply or MDF. Lower the blade again, put you veneer sheet against the fence and clamp a block of wood on the fence over the blade slot and veneer sheet, tight, but you should be able to slide your piece of veneer under it. Remove the veneer sheet and raise the blade again until it reaches the block clamped over the stock. It's better to round the corner of the block where you will be feeding the stock.
You now have a zero clearance insert, zero clearance between table and fence, zero clearance over the stock and 100% safety since the blade is buried inside the block clamped on the fence. It's now only a matter of feeding your stock slowly and steadily against the fence. I can cleanly cut .010" sheets of any material with this rig.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I use a steel ruler and a Japanese marking/veneer knife called shiragaki. Hida sells a decent one for 20$ or so. It works very well even with horrible splintery veneer such as bloodwood. You can use whatever cutting edge as long as it is very sharp, but a dedicated tool works best. For splintery wood make at least 3 lighter passes first.

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Build log

Another thing to do is to line up the ruler with the grain. I was having problems similar to yours, and someone suggested that to me. I don't know why I didn't think of it myself, but once I did, I had no further problem. Also, do as Alex said, and take very light passes with the blade. Once scored, the blade will follow it's previous path pretty well. The method results in more waste, as you usually have triangular pieces at each edge when done, because the grain never seems to run with the piece of veneer's edge.

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Waddy

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Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I don't have exp cutting mahogany but since it is so soft I imagine it must be a very easy prey for a sharp knife. When you cut you need to pay attention to the grain - look at the pore arrangement. For example in the pic below, you need to scribe from left to right (the pictured knife is right handed anyway). If you'd go from the other end you'd have a bigger chance to split it so you need to "arrange" the cut properly first.

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Build log

Thanks for all the answers, and thanks Laurent for the tablesaw directions. I was getting ready to set up my saw per your instructions when I decided to give it one more try by hand. I switched to a single edge razor blade and it cut like butter with light passes. I don't know what was going on yesterday, whether it was just one section of the veneer, or maybe the blade was too thick. or maybe my brain was off. Anyway, it took me all of 15 minutes to cut more than enough strips, not counting the time it took me to bandage my finger after I decided to use the back of the razor blade to push down on a lifted purfling with my finger pushing from the blade edge. It would have taken me longer than that to set up the saw. I will definitely try the saw sometime when I want to cut a whole bunch to have on hand. Already glued to the binding and ready to bend. Thanks everyone. Wendy

You know Alexandru, after rereading your post, I bet between yesterday and today I flipped the piece of veneer over and the grain was in a better direction for cutting today. I hadn't thought about that, and I will definitely remember that for the future. Thanks.