New HD Plywood?

[Derek Arita]

I'm getting back into WW after a long break. I was looking around at HD for some plywood and found that they carry a new type that I've never heard of before. Wish I could remember what it was called. If you know what I'm talking about, I have a few questions about it.
Is it good for painted furniture construction and shop cabinets? Does it come in 1/2" and 3/4"? Is it cheaper than furniture grade birch ply? Is it as good?
I've always purchased 1/2" BB ply in 5'x5' sheets. It sure would be nice to buy 4x8 sheets at a good price. I'll try to get the name on my next trip to HD. Thanks for the help.

[Larry Browning]

it sounds to me like you are talking about their birch plywood. To be kind, it is crap. Stick with the 5x5 baltic birch from the lumbar yard. The HD stuff has lots of voids and is very inconsistent in thickness. It is almost impossible to work with.

[John TenEyck]

What you will find at HD depends upon your particular store. Some HD stores carry imported birch plywood. As Larry said, it's pretty poor quality. However, my local HD in Niagara Falls, NY carries Columbia Purebond birch plywood, made in the USA, and a full 3/4" or 1/4" thick. I didn't see any 1/2". It's very nice stuff, actually, and costs about $44/sheet here. It's not BB plywood by any means, but for cabinets its good. My local HD also carries a 3/4" plywood called Sandeply, made in Ecuador. I'm not sure what it's made of, but it has a grain similar to mahogany only it's a light cream color. I just used some for a project and it worked well and took stain uniformly. They also carry 3/4" and 1/4" oak plywood, but I'm not sure where it's from.

Are any of these the one you are talking about?

John

[Jim O'Dell]

Last Baltic Birch I got was 4X8 from a lumber yard here locally. Very good quality. No voids. I used about 65% of it, and the rest is just as flat as when I bought it over a year and a half ago. See if your lumber yard, hopefully a plywood specialist, has it in the bigger sheets. Jim.
PS, locally I got mine from the Plywood Company of Fort Worth.

[Kurt Cady]

My HD has carried 'A/C cabinet plywood' in 3/4" and 1/2" for a while now. Made in Chile. For $22 per 3/4" sheet you can't beat it. A few voids but for shop cabinets or the Murphy bed it worked great.

Make sure you get the Chile stuff.

[Ted Calver]

What Kurt said....7 ply, only a few voids, great for cabinets.

[Dan Barber1]

Agree with Kurt and Ted. I made several pieces of shop furniture with it last year and it was just fine and I intend to do a couple of more this winter. Right now I'm finishing a utility room cabinet with it and no complaints. It's finish sanded on only one side and around here only available in the winter and into spring. At my HD it was about $22 two years ago but last year it was going for about $30 for 3/4. Birch is $44.

[Peter Kelly]

My HD has carried 'A/C cabinet plywood' in 3/4" and 1/2" for a while now. Made in Chile. For $22 per 3/4" sheet you can't beat it. A few voids but for shop cabinets or the Murphy bed it worked great.

Make sure you get the Chile stuff.The quality of the Chilean stuff is really up and down. I bought a ton of the stuff for shop cabinets last year, was void-free, flat and really inexpensive. I've bought two sheets earlier this year. Stuff was so warped it looked like a banana.

[Steve Baumgartner]

At my local HD, I've had more trouble with their storage and handling than with the quality of the material per se. It is almost impossible to find a sheet in their stack that isn't horrendously warped and/or scarred. I don't even look there any more since it is too much hassle to try to find anything flat.

[Justin Freund]

I noticed today that my local store started carrying TigerPly. This is cabinet grade AC ply with limited voids. It has Poplar veneers according to the company website. Its not a replacement for BB by any means but it does work quite well for jigs and shop cabinets. Its much better than the sandeply IMO.

[Peter Kelly]

The Chinese TigerPly stuff I tried out delaminated as I cut it. Had to throw most of the sheet I bought away.

[Alan Schaffter]

The big box stores carry different ply from different suppliers, at different times. The stuff from Chile (Arauco Ply) had decent laminations and a fairly thick, hard surface veneer. Some Asian stuff I've purchased there however, including their birch ply has thin, very brittle surface plies and a lot of voids. The brittle surface plies can chip badly and despite careful sanding, the locations where interior plies overlap, will often telegraph to the surface veneer. I just finished a cabinet using Lowes birch veneer ply. In the right lighting you can see lines from an underlying lamination joint on the finished surface!

[John Piwaron]

HD plywood - poor quality from one end to the other. Brittle exterior plys, interior plys so soft they have trouble holding screws, inconsistent thickness (sometimes within the same sheet) and worst of all, not flat. They curl like potato chips or develop waves. The stuff is best avoided.

[Bryan Wiesendahl]

My local HD has double sanded pine in 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 5/8 and 3/4 nominal sizes, however it's obviously import and like most other imports it's actually a full 1/32 to 1/16 undersize. I can't put a 1/2 panhead screw through an angle bracket into a sheet of the 1/2 that's been laminated with arborite on the front without it poking through. I had to either step up to a 5/8 construction (I build RV's so weight is a big issue) or buy the domestic ply. I've been using the Purebond recently and it's fairly decent for a decent enough price. I think a sheet of 3/4 costs me $44.

I've also had problems with their material handling, especially with thinner materials like 1/4 ply, luan and mdf hardboard. They don't sticker it well, or leave it out in the rain or something because it all has multiple waves (talking 4 or 5 "crests" along the 8' side) going both directions. For a while I bought the 4'x4' 1/4" ply underlayment for panels that needed to be particularly straight since it seemed like it was treated better. It also cost about the same.

I decided it was worth it for me to buy in bigger batches from a good distributor (PJ White Hardwoods in Vancouver) rather than mess about with the offerings HD had.

[michael case]

+1 Larry, mine was American ply still LOTS of voids

[John Piwaron]

+1 Larry, mine was American ply still LOTS of voids

Voids aren't good but I could deal with those more easily than soft interior plys, delamination and lack of flatness.