Desk Substrate

Geez, seems like I've had my hands full with little progress to show for it. I have been spending more time on the gallery's website, and I guess it is the way of veneer work sometime.
Desk top substrate! I decided I didn't want to do a 3/4" top but wanted more than 5/8", however plywood comes 1/8"s. Well I have extra 1/16" veneer I've used for cross banding. I opted to joint together some 1/16" Poplar veneer and laminate that in a 1/4" ply sandwich.

The sandwich gives me about 9/16" thick substrate, adding the two 1/16" walnut veneers it should come out to be somewhere around 11/16" aka 1/16" less than 3/4".
Here is said substrate shaped before the bake-ins are applied.
Nice subtle curves which I seem to be gravitating toward. Also I wanted to maintain the amount of usable surface area. Some more "radical" curves could look nice but in the end this is to be a daily desk with an effective use of space... who ever says their rooms are too big?

And the part that set this piece in motion. The top. Well the veneer for the top anyway. pictured above are the "strips" of veneer cut to mate together. The light spaces in between is just the ply wood "work space" I had set up but nicely defines the joint lines for viewing pleasure/ease.
So, part of the reason I needed to veneer this is that the raw board wasn't quite wide enough for a desk top. I'd veneer it in order to do a couple slip matches to make it wide enough. I have used this technique before. Although I'd prefer to have planks wide enough and like to maintain the wood's "integrity", it's just not going to happen all the time. Being in my position and locale I need to be able to work with what I have. I'm sure many others can relate :).
So, those slip matches are the two thinner pieces inside the strips with sap wood.
I think this will make a beautiful top! I'm excited to see it clean up :).