best type of plane for plywood?

[James Baker SD]

Our kitchen came with cabinets and drawers with plywood doors and fronts. Looks like a Baltic birch type with many thin layers. Two of the drawers are hitting each other (bottom on one drawer drags on the top of the drawer below it). I have checked the slides are they are still tight and snug so either they never were fitted properly or the plywood has swollen.

I want to plane the bottom of one drawer front, so the question is what type of plane would work best on the plywood edge, a mix of long grain, end grain and glue?

[Nick Stokes]

I grab whatever plane is closest, and get after it. If you're super worried about tearout at the end of the cut you can chamfer the back edge with a chisel first.

Plywood will plane just fine with a sharp iron.

[Zach Dillinger]

Whichever one you care about the least.

[Robert Hazelwood]

Planing a plywood edge is like planing endgrain. It needs to be sharp, and a low angle helps. Block plane would be my choice for what you are talking about. But there's no need to buy a special plane just for this job. As Nick says, you need to be mindful of spelching on the end of the cut.

[Chris Hachet]

Whichever one you care about the least.

I have a type 17 #4 I keep around for tasks like this....just remember whatever you use will need resharpened often as plywood needs a sharp edge and it will dull an edge quickly in my experience.

[Patrick Chase]

Our kitchen came with cabinets and drawers with plywood doors and fronts. Looks like a Baltic birch type with many thin layers. Two of the drawers are hitting each other (bottom on one drawer drags on the top of the drawer below it). I have checked the slides are they are still tight and snug so either they never were fitted properly or the plywood has swollen.

I want to plane the bottom of one drawer front, so the question is what type of plane would work best on the plywood edge, a mix of long grain, end grain and glue?

The bottom of the drawer will be a combination of end- and long-grain. As others point out you normally want a low angle for end-grain, but that increases the risk of tearout in the long-orientation plies. Also, when I've used low-bevel-angle BU blades on Baltic Birch ply in the past the blades have worn fairly quickly - the exterior and marine grades in particular are nastier stuff than end-grain birch, possibly due to the presence of adhesive at the ply boundaries.

I'd go with a BU plane with a total cutting angle of 45 deg or so.