Looking for Advice on Kitchen Cabinet/Closet Plywood

[Bill Dufour]

Location, I assume Texas? My local HD has a selection of weird plywoods of unknown species coming from central America and China. It looks like a hardwood veneer of some sort. A light color wood with little grain pattern. I think the supplier and species change with every load. Good luck sourcing more if you need to match it.
They used to have some nice Monterey pine plywood from China. Now it is fewer and much thicker plys and not as good a surface look. It just looks cheap compared to the original.
Bil lD

[Ron Selzer]

Talk to a real sheet goods supplier about Baltic Birch comes in 60"x60", price by skid, bunk whatever term is uses locally should be 2x sheets in 3/4". comes in 1/2" and 1/4" (all nominal size) Should cut at least 25% off of per sheet price. You are talking quite a few sheets for told
Ron

[Josh Baldwin]

Location, I assume Texas? My local HD has a selection of weird plywoods of unknown species coming from central America and China. It looks like a hardwood veneer of some sort. A light color wood with little grain pattern. I think the supplier and species change with every load. Good luck sourcing more if you need to match it.
They used to have some nice Monterey pine plywood from China. Now it is fewer and much thicker plys and not as good a surface look. It just looks cheap compared to the original.
Bil lD

Hey Bill I'm actually in Richmond VA

[Josh Baldwin]

Since everything is painted white, why not use melamine for the boxes? In 2008 (13 years ago) I built a set of cabinets for local "Y." They were in the pool house. Boxes made from melamine, shelves plywood, hard wood face frames, MDF core veneer for doors with iron on tape on edges. Remember these are in the pool house, where the humidity is unreal, both summer and winter. No complaints of any kind. Buy your melamine from Wurth, or similar, not the BORGS. It's not the same stuff. Speakjng of Wurth, where are you located, as they are a regional supplier.

Hey Bruce I'm in Richmond VA. So are there different types of melamine? The way I've always seen it is hard plastic like material that looks super cheap. Am I thinking of the wrong thing here? I was hoping for the matte painted look.

[Josh Baldwin]

I couldn't agree more for the boxes. When you're done building, you're done; no painting required. Heavy as a mule and the edges will cut you just looking at them, but it's flat, stable, durable, and very reasonably priced.

John

Hey John are there nicer types of Melamine that don't look plasticy?

[Jeff Bartley]

Josh,
Wurth is in Richmond, they have as high a quality as you’ll find. I’d give them a call.
They send a truck out here (Shenandoah valley) at least a couple times a week.

[Jim Becker]

The BORG were not from the original Star Trek series (William Shatner/Leonard Nimoy) of the late 1960s but from one of the sequels: Star Trek: The Next Generation (Patrick Stewart)

I stand corrected and you are right...my bad!

[roger wiegand]

The BORG were not from the original Star Trek series (William Shatner/Leonard Nimoy) of the late 1960s but from one of the sequels: Star Trek: The Next Generation (Patrick Stewart)

The other part of the derivation, aside from the resemblance of the large cuboid space ships of the Borg Collective, is their tagline "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated". When this usage originated back on rec.woodworking in the Usenet era of the interweb small independent hardware stores were still predominant. They were, to a very great extent, assimilated by the Borg.

[Brian Backner]

The other part of the derivation, aside from the resemblance of the large cuboid space ships of the Borg Collective, is their tagline "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated". When this usage originated back on rec.woodworking in the Usenet era of the interweb small independent hardware stores were still predominant. They were, to a very great extent, assimilated by the Borg.

BORG has also been said to come from: Big Old Retail Giant

FWIW, I built the cabinets for our new kitchen six years ago. Given the amount of work I knew would be required, there was no way I was going to use BORG plywood or even the stuff from higher end lumber yards nearby and need to work around voids, etc.. I ended up going to a specialty supplier (Downes and Reader south of MetroBoston) and special ordered what I wanted direct from Columbia Products: true 3/4" thick prefinished Maple Plywood with two AA faces ) 0.06" thick and 11 core layers of birch with no voids. Stuff was crazy expensive at $145/sheet, I had to buy an entire lift of 50 sheets (the smallest custom order they'd consider), and it took nearly four months for delivery, but I have never regretted the cost once I started working with the stuff. It was by far the best sheet good material I have ever seen - cut so clean, virtually no touch up sanding was needed and it dadoed like a dream. For reference, I was using a Forrest Duraline Hi-AT with a 6" dampener and an 8" DadoKing set. The saw was also fitted out with an original Excalibur 66" crosscut sled dialed in to less than 0.005" variance by the 5-cut method on a 48" square piece of 1/4" MDF. I have found many other places for its use. I only wish I had ordered 75 sheets (or more) to begin with.

[Julie Moriarty]

I don't understand the criticism of borg plywood for carcases and drawer boxes, if you're doing face frames and drawer fronts. When I remodeled our kitchen several years ago, that's what I used and it's holding up just fine. And some of the sides are exposed, like on the sides of the oven and frig. All of the panels here are that Sandeply I mentioned earlier.


And we've had a lot of compliments. No one sees voids in the plywood or the thickness of the veneer.

FWIW, I began cabinet building with high grade materials. But cabinets are not furniture. They are abused and taken for granted and when somebody tires of them or a new owner doesn't like them, they get demolished. So why dump extra money into something no one but yourself will ever appreciate?

[Jon Grider]

I don't understand the criticism of borg plywood for carcases and drawer boxes, if you're doing face frames and drawer fronts. When I remodeled our kitchen several years ago, that's what I used and it's holding up just fine. And some of the sides are exposed, like on the sides of the oven and frig. All of the panels here are that Sandeply I mentioned earlier.


And we've had a lot of compliments. No one sees voids in the plywood or the thickness of the veneer.

FWIW, I began cabinet building with high grade materials. But cabinets are not furniture. They are abused and taken for granted and when somebody tires of them or a new owner doesn't like them, they get demolished. So why dump extra money into something no one but yourself will ever appreciate?

Thank you Julie. I've used carefully selected Borg plywood for several face frame kitchens with few issues. On cabs that have an exposed side, I'm more picky on which sheet to use. At 57 bucks for a 4 X 8', it is a reasonable and affordable solution. Would I prefer to use all high end cab grades? Yes. But the economic situation can influence the material selection, and whether the bid is selected. I find that in my senior years, I love the orange Borgs somewhat reluctant willingness to break the sheet goods down to manageable sizes as well. Well worth the 25 cents per cut to save the back, and imo cost effective as well. As you mentioned, cabs are not furniture, many will be replaced in 10 years.

[roger wiegand]

No one sees voids in the plywood or the thickness of the veneer.

Did you read my post? the veneer on the last stuff I bought from HD was 0.01" thick (think two sheets of typewriter paper). When a water-borne finish was applied to it it buckled and split over the voids, some of which measured up to 3" in diameter. You would have to be blind not to see them.

[Jim Matthews]

Trying to save a few bucks on materials always comes back to bite me, although others seem to get by.

We must be shopping at the same places.

[Austin Perera]

I once used what I thought was a decent birch ply from HD for an aquarium cabinet build. After selecting some sheets that appeared as flat as possible, it wasn't until I was home that I realized how out of square they were cut.

[Julie Moriarty]

As you mentioned, cabs are not furniture, many will be replaced in 10 years.

After I finished the kitchen cabinets in our last house (Honduran mahogany rails & stiles and drawer fronts with ribbon sapele panels),I saw a home reno show where the people happily demolished kitchen cabinets with a sledge hammer. It was at that point it dawned on me that at some point those kitchen or bathroom cabinets you lovingly made will end up in the dumpster. They could be in perfectly good shape, but if they aren't visually appealing to the homeowner, in the trash they go.