It is not an inlay, but Jaguar simply covered a whole given piece that forms the cross banding. With that said, the upper dash would have to be sanded very carefully as to not go through the burl, if you did you would end up with a wavy line running the length of the upper dash.
This is the only area where you would run into this problem, the rest folds around corners and edges so there is no chance of sanding through.
This page clearly shows that it is not in fact edge banding, but a whole sheet.
Jaguar MK2 Reveneering Project.

When I do mine, I am not going to do it this way as it's to difficult, the edge banding method assures that you won't sand through, but it takes a bit of skill and patients to get a good clean "butt" joint to the burl and edge banding.

99% of the time when you get a green horn who wants to just do the finish, where in a case like this the veneer is perfectly sound and requires very little to no sanding. This person wants to do a "good job" and inevitably sands through the burl walnut on the upper dash. I've seen this over and over again _ it's very frustrating !
A proper strip job removes all the finish so very little sanding is required.

I did a set of door capping from a Silver shadow and only one was touched by a "handy man" while the rest still had what was left of the original finish.
The ones with the original finish were still fine, but you could clearly see where Rolls Royce had sanded most of the veneer away. I just use a 400 grit just to smooth it over and it was ready for the new finish. Other steps were done of course to prep the surface for the new finish, but very little sanding was done and certainly nothing more course then a 400 grit piece of paper.

The handy man job on the one door capping was full of cross sanding from what looked like a 220 or even courser 180 and there were parts that were sanded through.

My best advice to you is to practice with scrap _ patience is key _ take your time and get familiar with the wood and products.
I like to use a two part 24 hour epoxy, I have used iron on glue in the past with good results, but it is said that iron on glue "moves" and doesn't dry hard. So in this case the finish could crack, although I have never had that happen or at least I have never had anyone come back and complain.

I have used marine varnish, urethane and now a two part clear coat. All of which requires multiple coats to fill the grain to which most of which is sanded away so in the end the grain has been properly filled with finish, then the finishing top coats can be applied. Lots of wet sanding and polishing is involved.
The trick to a good mirror finish is to leave what ever you decide to use properly cure so that it doesn't continue to shrink and expose the grain in a finished job.
I found the two part clear coat (even with the hardener in it) has to sit at least a month to fully harden. I stopped using varnish and plastic air dry finishes as they never seem to stop curing.

 

This is what British Autowood told me,
"The straighter grain walnut sapwood by the way was used by Jaguar to veneer the wood and act as a crossanding. The face walnut burl was then planed away at the various angles to expose these lighter strips beneath, what may assume are inlays..."


I think the more basic question is if your dash wood is that bad where the veneer and the lower levels are damaged, I really would caution that type of repair as that is not often the DIY person to attempt. Just applying a veneer is to me questionable that many really can do it property and going below that to me is very advanced. Good luck but if your wood needs that type of work I really recommend to spend the money for a pro.


Wood on these cars are expensive as it can cost $2k to $5k but a DIY attempt will often look like that half @#&$

 

JP, I can say that on the parts that I have renovated,wood around roof & A pillar the light coloured stripe is an inlay. I know this as I spent some time in removing it and the walnut veneer. The screen top is solid natural grain, not walnut. The B pillar top, is a solid pce , no stripe/inlay, with veneer applied to centre section.The B pillar , small squares, attached to lower trim panel, were not stripped. The A pillar/screen embelish has an inlay of light veneer, with walnut veneer. The rear section over the door has a walnut veneer over a solid pce of what appears to be a hardwood, possible mahogany/sapelle, no inlay.( Similar in some ways to the A pilr trim that has the underlying wood exposed).
Hope this goes some way towards answering your querries.
Incidently when I said about varnishing, earlier in this thread , to reach an A1 finish you will need to apply many coats of finish, cut back after each coat using progressively finer abrasives ,(ie; wet and dry 1000/1200 grit). Information detailing the proccess is already freely available so rather than include it I would advise you to search the net. A word of warning however, in some articles reference is made to complete and lengthy immersion in water, (In order to strip veneer)I would warn against this practice.
barry

 

Barry,
Agreed. This what I found when I did the woodwork on my Mk2. The solid wood used over the windshield is apparently mahogany. I found clearly traces of inlay on the "newspaper" tray of the dashboard. This is part of the only document I found on the web to describe the woodworking process:
"To produce the high quality required for Jaguar and Daimler cars American walnut veneer is generally used with Anegre veneer as an underlay. Other veneers such as Makore, Bosse, Sapele of African walnut are also used as under veneers.
The actual burr is a caused by a growth, or fault, in the walnut tree trunk. In North American trees, these fault often encircle the trunk, and this gives large useable areas of high quality burr."
It also talks about "boxwood inlays for the door filets on Van den Plas limousines" but unfortunately does not say whether that techniques was used on other Jaguar models.
All very confusing indeed :-)
Attached is a picture of my car dashboard with boxwood and birch inlays (aka edge banding)
Best,
JP
1960 Mk2