Further to the successful mill trial at Federated Co-operatives Limited in August 1995, a need to optimize the veneer lathe incisor and determine the benefits was identified. While the feasibility study was carried out directly at the mill, a majority of this work was conducted at the Forintek laboratory. During the early stages of this project, much effort was given to upgrade the Forintek 14-inch mini-lathe so that it could run with an incisor bar. Then an incisor bar assembly was fabricated for bar pattern tests. Finally, a series of tests were conducted to determine the optimum operation condition for an incisor bar and the effects of incising on veneer quality and recovery. The results showed that veneer is much flatter when peeled with a combination of incising and overdriving during peel. Species has a very strong effect on veneer flatness, especially spruce. Bar overdrive seems to be as equally important as incising. For the mini-lathe with which the tests were carried out, a 100.5% overdrive seems to yield the flattest veneer. Peeling speed and log conditioning has much less effect on veneer flatness than species and overdrive. Faster peeling speed and lower conditioning temperature seem to favour veneer flatness. According to the laboratory tests, veneer recovery can be increased by 5% from veneer stretching and flattening and reduction of spinout. An initial comparison also reveals that veneer peeled using an incisor bar may have less thickness variation and surface roughness. As a recommendation, further tests should be carried out to determine the effects of incising on other processing and performance properties such as pressing and bonding. The incising technology should be implemented in plywood mills, particularly in the softwood plywood mills, which use a big bar lathe, because an incisor bar can be easily retrofitted.