Painting Baltic Birch Plywood

[James Jayko]

I'm making drawer fronts out of Baltic birch plywood. They will be painted.

My question is do I need to edge band this before painting? Iron-on edge banding doesn't hold up particularly well, and using hard wood edge banding will be a pain. I'll be spraying two coats of primer and two coats of paint. I just do not want the ply to show through on the ends. Anyone have any experience here?

[Jim Becker]

Even with filling, the edges of plywood are going to be hard to mask, texture-wise, with just paint. Edge-banding provides you with a smooth surface that will ultimately give you a better appearance if you want clean edges.

[James Jayko]

In my heart, I knew this was the answer...

[Wayne Lomman]

Fill the edges with polyester filler as in auto body filler. Do it before you sand the edges at all and don't over sand after. Do it once, prime, and then fill any misses before proceeding to final coats. Cheers

[Bill McNiel]

I built a curved bookcase with 1" thick BB shelves. I used Bondo on all the face edges and they came out flawless.

[andy bessette]

I would avoid any polyester-based solution (which may be OK for awhile) in favor of saturating the edge grain with epoxy, like WEST System.

[julian abram]

I've edge banded a lot of plywood wood with iron on including some drawer fronts. In the early years some of the banding would pop loose later. I've learned to slow down and exercise patience pays big dividends with iron on banding. I rarely have any pop loose these days.

[glenn bradley]

How many drawers are we talking about? How will they be used; some kitchen drawers get opened and closed many times a day, a dresser drawer may get opened once a day or less.

If there are less than a dozen I would experiment with glue-size on the end grain. I have had good success using glue-size made out of TB-III which remains pretty resilient to impact; that is, it is not brittle. I use about 50:50 glue and water as a starting point and go thicker (more glue) or thinner as the application dictates.

I use 2 or 3 coats. The first coat seals the materiel and is quite rough to the touch. The primary function here is to create a barrier coat that block the edge grain's ability to interfere with the following coats. Sand this first coat with 400 grit to smooth it a bit. The second coat fills in any remaining irregularities and can also be sanded to 400 grit.

A long sanding block (a milled piece of scrap wood with abrasives glued on) helps produce a smooth flat surface if you don't have finer grit belts for an edge sander. A third coat may or may not be required based on the post sanding appearance.

It is not a zero-effort solution but,is not near as involved as describing it makes it sound. It would be easy to mix a small batch and test it on a piece of scrap to see if this "liquid edge banding" will meet your needs under your primer and paint.

P.s. I have also done this with 2lb cut shellac. Just sand the edges to 400 grit before you start.

[Carlos Alvarez]

I've had good results putting epoxy on the ends, then re-sanding to shape, then painting.