Hi, Ty!
What relatively little experience I have over 60 years of covering model aerioplanes leaves me with this... (BTW, first covered model was a 10 cent Comet rubber scale jobbie. No tissue in the kit. Tissue specified for covering. Only tissue in the house was "bathroom tissue." Yes, I did...)
Build a surface of Nitrate on the wood (two or three coats, sanded if necessary to reduce fuzz; first coat about 50/50 thinner/dope - later coats thinned more.) Smooth the covering over the side to be covered. Wick THINNER ONLY through, around the edges, to soften the dope which will adhere the covering to the framework. When, for example, damp silkspan has dried and shrunk, paint a thinned coat of dope through it to bond to structure everywhere the edge-bonding hadn't stuck things down.
The THINNER ONLY trick helps prevent CF veil fibers from pulling out of their matrix, btw. ANY dope, particularly Nitrate, is sticky and likely to pull CF fibers. Wicking-in the thinner creates enough bond that the next coat can be safely brushed on - with THINNED nitrate. After that, pulling fibers is unlikely, so go to it.
0.2 oz/sq ft CF unsized veil follows ridiculously varied shapes nicely, if you wick thinner through it for bonding, and prod it gently with a soft brush to turn corners, or fill gaps. Both silkspan and CF veil add enormous strength and hardness, at very little cost in weight with Nitrate dope. "Thumping" the surface with a fingernail shows that. Over simply doped wood, it sounds like a doctor thumping your chest or back. Over doped silkspan it has a harder sound, and over properly doped CF veil, it sounds like a hard plastic!
Why use dope for this? I heard somewhere that the lignin in wood (which is the bond between the wood fibers) is softened by a solvent like acetone, or the equivalents we use in dope nowadays. So the bond goes deeper than just a surface coating. It penetrates into the wood. Whatever the covering material, it BECOMES part of the wood. I hope I heard right about that - it seems to work out true.