Do you always put a fresh edge on your plywood?

[tim walker]

I bought some baltic birch and some other very nice plywood and both have corners that are square and edges that are perfect. Bought from lumber supply house, not big box. Would you still freshen the edges or not?

[Robert Hayward]

With that type of ply the edges are usually good enough for most of my work. Although my table saw cuts are much smoother than the factory edges. If the edges are going to show or matter I will cut them.

[glenn bradley]

If the edges are going to show or matter I will cut them.

This pretty much covers it. If you want t true edge, make one. A factory edge is not straight enough for much that I do.

[Tom Bain]

I always make new edges.

[Mike Kees]

The only time I do not trim edges is when I am framing a house.

[johnny means]

I never leave a factory edge. It's just not worth the hassle of finding some flaw when your knee deep in the project.

[Bruce King]

If the stock piece is larger than a few feet I make the piece 1/4 larger then final easy cuts. Twice the dust but I wear a mask and also use a small fan to blow across the blade towards where the air cleaner is. I don’t really use plywood anymore except for jigs.

[Andrew Seemann]

If I need the edge to be better, I will recut it. If I do not, I generally don't.

[Bob Jones 5443]

A shop-made edge is the only one you can count on to be clean, smooth, straight, crisp, and square. I also like to do a preliminary scoring run with the blade a shy 1/16 high.

[Patrick Kane]

It’s not worth the 3/16-1/4” width of plywood for me to check it for square, dings, chips etc. I know my slider cuts true and so everything gets a fresh reference edge first to begin.

[David Kumm]

You can't count on any ply being square unless you trim it yourself. downside is trim cuts are the hardest type to capture dust. Dave

[Jim Becker]

It would be a very rare situation for me to NOT put a fresh edge on sheet goods of any kind, just like with solid stock. Factory edges are never clean and true and you cannot even assume that the sheet is actually square at the corners relative to other corners.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Squarely in the if it matters camp here. I can't think of any recent plywood projects in my shop that the edges aren't getting put in a frame or hidden behind a face frame, which makes it optional. It does all get checked for square though, some isn't.

[Frank Pratt]

As much as I love Baltic birch plywood, I find that it's generally a lot worse that regular plywood or MDF for not being square. Some sheets are pretty close, some are off by well over 1/8". And the quality of the cut is not great.

[Dan Chouinard]

Yes always.
As Dave points out, I will waste a bit of stock to avoid the extra dust that a trim cut throws at me.
I have not tried the preliminary scoring pass that Bob mentioned.

[Terry Wawro]

I'll go against the grain and say I never cut a fresh edge unless I need to. For cabinet work, a lot of the edges are buried in a rabbit or dado anyway. As long as it comes in square and undamaged, I don't bother with a redundant recut.

[Ray Newman]

I always rough cut oversize, then cut to final measurement. Learned this the hard way....