U really have to use an epoxy adhesive or other glues recommended for wood to metal to get the wood to stick with a strong bond. So the contact adhesives arent really going to work well.
After, softening the wood veneer (I used the veneer softener from the veneersupplies site) the veneer wants to buckle and has a hard time staying perfectly flat.....thats where the vacuum bagging really came into play.....forces the veneer to conform to the object. Even in their original sheet form, the veneer sheets arent perfectly flat....some of the knotted areas of the grain dont like to lie flat. Now if you want to just clamp a piece of veneer to a flat surface then you probably wouldnt really need a vacuum bagging system....U could probably get it to work with just clamps and using flat wight to weigh it down well. For curvature and corners though the vacuum bagging is the way to go.
I precut the veneer close to the shape I needed it to be....leaving excess in the right places so it would fold over the edges when vacuum bagged. It helps to cut it close and them make slits in the wood near corners to help the wood fold under the vacuum....that keeps it from cracking.
It took me a couple tries on a few parts to get it to where I was happy with the results. Some of my first tries cracked a bit too much.....so I re-did them. Mine arent perfect but I was pleasantly happy with how they have come out so far.
I dont have any pics of my vacuum bag process......I fanagled some equipment together when I did some small carbon fiber parts a few years ago.
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