Shopping for birch plywood I found some 3/4″ poplar plywood at Home Depot for $29.00 a sheet. I am building some painted built-in cabinets so I thought this was a pretty good deal. Birch ply runs about $45.00 here in Williamsburg, Va. Once I started cutting and combining with some left over birch ply, I found the poplar ply to be less than 3/4″ thick by a good 1/32″. The panels also had some varying thickneses throughout. I guess it pays to buy quality product. I do not know the source of this poplar ply, but I will pay more attention to what I am buying and check thickness in store.
Robert
Replies
Home Depot seems to frequently get in cheap plywood of various kinds. Ours has had 3/4" oak ply for $29/sheet. There was a thread about it several months ago, with lots of speculation that it's made overseas, or at least on some kind of factory-ship. People who had built with it indicated that not only did it vary in size quite a bit, but also that the veneer was microscopically thing and there were lots of voids.
I bought 3 sheets of the oak, but only to be used in utilitarian projects.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
That stuff drives me nuts. Not only does it vary in widths along the sheet, but the dust from sanding it is some of the worst things i have encountered. But i'll admit to using it for shop made stuff because it is so cheap.
Steve
Edited 12/2/2005 4:09 pm ET by treeguy
Beware of this cheap plywood! I bought some of the $29/sheet Home Depot birch plywood for utility drawers. The outer laminations actually delaminated as I tried to clamp the drawers at glue-up. I don't think there was any glue at all for large stretches of the veneers! How cheaply can this crap be made! Needless to say, I won't be buying it again.
--joejoe
We brought in a lift of a similar plywood a while back. It was a reject grade maple, D3 for paint finish, or for ribs etc.
Well, we cut prepainted 10 sheets for cabinet interiors and cut them on the CNC, and every one of them delaminated into two or three pieces as soon as we cut into the middle of the face. Totally unsuitable for anything. The 20-bucks-a-sheet-savings was lost pretty fast when you consider the paint and milling time.
Plywood is a funny thing. You REALLY need to know what you're buying. THere are so many grades and types for so many different applications. It takes a long time to really know them all.
The older I get, the better I was....
Why In this country do we have to buy plywood from China? What the F#$&. HD. I know we want bargains. Lets atleast get it from Canada. Not that I have a problem with the Chinese. Let them make the thin as S%$# veneers.
I'm Cranky this morning, Lou
"as the twig bends, so grows the tree"
Lou,
You might as well figure out how to live with made-in-china products, otherwise you're gonna be cranky for the next century. The fact that someone is selling it means that someone is buying it, that's all. It isn't necessarily fit for our consumption.
DR
Ring, I Hear you!!!!! My sales rep stopped inand gave me the facts. What it boiled down to was; thinner veneer = higher yield, more cashola,save a tree, and etc. Not to cranky today, just purchase a 51'' panel sander this week, Well maybe I will be when the payment book gets here.
-Lou
p.s. I'm only cranky when I'm alone or with someone. Quote: John Doherty
Edited 2/4/2006 6:22 am ET by loucarabasi
Edited 2/4/2006 6:23 am ET by loucarabasi
Edited 2/8/2006 4:53 am ET by loucarabasi
I work in a lumberyard/sheet goods supplier in Vermont and might be able to contribute a few facts from the supply end. Plywood quality is something that we really struggle with our suppliers over. We have begun offering plywood graded not only for face veneer, but core as well. Bottom of the line D-3 Import Core Yellow Birch $35, for $16 more the D-3 Birch is available with a Canadian made Poplar Core. There is just no comparison cost-wise b/w Chinese and Canadian products. We can't even unload the imported ply fast enough.But the fact is that production is being empasized over quality with the exceptions of the Marine and Baltic Birch products. As a result cabinet grade plywood will continue in its current trend to grow thinner (in core and veneer) and be handled with less care at the factory and brokers where time is money. It seems that the plywood producers and the buyers would rather have two sheets of questionable quality than one that is double checked at twice the price.
Arch, Funny you say the are not handled with care. Went to my sheet good supplier yesturday. The warehouse guy had my cherry plywood over mdf. sitting face down on the forklift forks. I was like hey dude how about bringing me a new piece. He was like you can just sand the sheet, O-ok like the veneers are so thick that i can do that. Maybe like 10yrs ago. How thin will this stuff be in 10yrs?
Cranky again, Lou
I have had terrible experiences with the chinese plywood.Namely:The veneers are overlapping then crushed flat,lots of formaldehyde fumes when ripping,rips hook minutes after cutting and the suface is undulating.I noticed that stamped in red on the edge (really) was the makers mark F**** Hui And they they are!!!
I do not know exactly what HD is selling, but from what you say it sounds like plywood made in China. They are putting unbelievable quantities of poplar ply on the world market at prices that are impossible to resist. If it's furniture your building, resist.
DR
I am building some built-in cabinets, painted, it is really annoying when you try to match up to full 3/4" thick birch. I figured poplar paints so well it was a good deal. Not worth the $15 -$20 saved.Robert
I stay away from HD and Lowes for hardwood of all kinds. Not only do I get a better variety of materials and grades from my dedicated sheet goods supplier, but the prices really aren't that much out of range either... what's $5-8 a sheet more when it's not undersized and isn't full of voids and crappy laminations? The only downside is that they aren't open on Saturdays.
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I stay away from HD and Lowes for hardwood of all kinds. Not only do I get a better variety of materials and grades from my dedicated sheet goods supplier, but the prices really aren't that much out of range either... ">
Agree. There is no such thing as a free lunch- good quality hardwood plywood costs because it requires effort to ensure consistency and quality. At least at HD, most of what I've seen is firewood quality (if you can stand the fumes). If you have a reputable dealer, pay him- plywood is a bargain as it is- a sheet of 3/4" hardwood plywood replaces 32 bf of solid wood (in an appropriate application). At $50 a sheet, that's about $1.50/bf.Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
My local Ace Hardware actually calls their inferior grade of ply, "China Birch", and I've found the same voids, lack of adhesive and overlapped verneers. Most of the core plys are poplar or a sort of maple. I believe this is manufactured offshore , presumably on a ship. When I lived in central Tennessee, we had a local buyer of wood "on the stump", who would receive and trim to length, large quality logs for the "Chinese floating factory" as he called it. I used to get two to three foot long green logs from his trim-pile, which I split into planks for turning plates and bowls. One day I had to pass up some white oak that measured 60", and 76" in dia, because I simply couldn't move them. They burned that pile every month or so. Sad to see that waste.
John
Your plywood is likely meant to be used as "core" for veneer layup. Its likely 18mm (3/4=19mm). Its not necessarily low quality just not the dimension you have grown used to. If all you use is 18mm why would it matter? I use a material sold as Italian poplar which I find to be very high quality and stable with good void free laminations and sanded smoother than average and it is also 18mm. Of course, I vacuum laminate fancy veneers to it. aloha, mike
HD poplar plywood
Part of the problem with HD's poplar ply is its glue, not its provenance. The material is produced by Columbia Wood Products, in California, using a soy based glue. It's part of their Pure Bond line and is marketed as a no added formaldehyde plywood. To accommodate clients who have environment concerns we've been using this plywood for a few years. The veneer often peels, the thickness varies and in general it's not as stabile as plywood used to be. Sounds like growing old. Anyone who's been working with manufactured board for more than 10 years will have the same experience, prices for a decent cabinet grade 4' X 8' have gone through the roof (covered in Chinese OSB) with diminished quality.
In defense of HD and Columbia, at least the product is not being made from devastated Russian or Brazilian forests, and though Eco friendly has its downside, still looks like up to me.
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