re: Veneering Questions

I totally get the hesitance of going down the HHG rabbit hole but you can do it on the cheap.  I have an actual glue pot now but when I did that mirror above, I did it with a $7 hot plate I bought on eBay and an old pot filled with water and I cooked the glue in the water bath in a glass jar.  I also bought a cheap analog fast read cooking thermometer to monitor the temperature of the glue.   The biggest expense was a veneer hammer but you can make that yourself (see Shipwright's old bogs on LJ if you can wade through the destruction they did to blogs in the conversion).  He has some videos on Youtube too.     LeeValley has a glue pot that does not take up too much space that would be fine for occasional small projects like this. 

Hammer veneering is one the most gratifying processes I have done in the shop.  It is right up there with using a well tuned hand plane but instead of the schick sound, you get a crackle when it is working as the air and excess glue are hammered out from underneath the veneer (you use the veneer hammer sort of like a squeegee while applying pressure).  When it stops the crackling, the veneer is stuck down and there  usually no more clamping needed.