question about router and plywood

[aurelio alarcon]

When working with plywood, can a router be used just as it would with regular hard wood? I have used the router to make dadoes in plywood, but I havent used it for routing decorative edges. Is this possible to do without a lot of tear out?

[Todd Burch]

Depends on what type of plywood! Cheap plywood will likely have voids that will cause a problem, either with tearout, divots or during finishing (because you have to fill). Even if you get none of the problems, the reversing grain will require a lot of attention (and time) during the finishing process.

Your best option might be to apply solid wood edging and then route the edging to get a clean profile.

I route MDF all the time for profiles, and when properly prepped, you can't tell it's MDF.

[aurelio alarcon]

Thanks for your response Todd .