Bill,

Sounds to me like molded veneer. Before the use of epoxy in boat building, molded construction often involved extensive tooling, high pressure, and elevated temperature (hot molding). Someone on this board had a hot molded canoe that he liked very much. The use of epoxy made ambient temperature molding (cold molding) possible. The contact pressure for cold molding is most often supplied by staples, although vacuum bagging is also used. I have often toyed with the idea of cold molding using a stripper as the the plug - even rescued a vacuum pump from the scrap pile with that in mind!

Sam