IKEA thin ply wood - Pine?

[Warren Gandy]

I recently (Oct 2022) walked through IKEA and spotted a piece of "furniture" made of a thin ply plywood. The plies appear to have a thickness similar to baltic birch, a material that I've seen in a lot of IKEA products. But the face looks all wrong. Is it me or does this look like pine?
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[Bob Vavricka]

Looks like fir plywood to me

[Jeff Roltgen]

Yep. CDX.
This is getting pretty funny anymore - watching the el-cheapo's grasping for any way to make it look like there is no inflation. Problem is, they were at bottom before all these issues came up, now no way left to cheat it through. And sadly, a large percentage of the public may not actually catch on?
I hope most people realize just how hard the "bottom of the barrel" is being scraped here...

[Jim Becker]

It does indeed look like fir/pine but it's also clearly multi-core which is more suitable for furniture.

[Andrew More]

Agreed pine plywood. That having been said, I think Pine is fine, and it really comes down to the quality of the wood, just like it would with a hardwood. I totally get the Ikea hate, but generally speaking they're pretty honest about what you're getting: cheap furniture at a cheap price.

It's stuff like Pottery Barn, and Restoration Hardware that burn me up. They'd take that same cheap plywood, give it a trendy name, a couple of custom touches, and charge 10K for it.

Here the thing I don't know. Where is the decent furniture at a reasonable price? Something that's not made of particle board and promises that going to last longer than time it takes to assemble and use it a few times? The Toyota Corolla/Honda Civic of the furniture world? At one point that was Ikea, we've still got some of the pine and maple furniture we bought from them, but I think that's long past.

[David Stone (CT)]

As other say, the face and plies appear to be fir plywood, albeit of a pretty high quality kind with quite a few plies and no voids visible. Back in the 1970s, my dad made some simple bookcase/hi-fi shelving units out of A/B fir ply that, years on, as woodworker, I recognized was amazingly good and much better than the fir ply readily available in more recent decades. IMO, nice fir plywood is a cool and interesting material for making furniture and creative expression (see, for example, sculptor Donald Judd's boxes). IKEA operates a scale where they can presumably spec stuff that is otherwise commercially unavailable. I can only wish to access fir ply comparable to what my dad purchased in his small town lumberyard 50 years back (while also acknowledging we've got a world of other materials better than most of what existed back then).

[Mel Fulks]

Rotary cut makes wood look funny .

[Bradley Gray]

Gotta be better than particle board.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

That may be Radiata. The ply structure is excellent.

[Jeff Roltgen]

Evidently I'm the only one seeing the uber-coarse 50 grit scratch pattern, like they just yanked it off the shelf at the local home center? Looks like something you would build a chicken coop out of.

Call me a snob, but making something out of construction grade sheet goods and calling it furniture is a desperate new low. Until they push it long enough that the public accepts, evidently.
At least the BBirch had some redeeming qualities about it, like hardwood core/facing and a more subdued edge pattern of the thinner layers.
Wondered what the big manufacturers were going to do without it now. Just plain yuck.

Watch for the newest trend in furniture fashion, at your local retailer soon:
Highly refined OSB cabinetry. Feel the luxurious texture, marvel at it's void free core, the beauty of the naturally selected wafers of wood, all bonded together with the utmost of care.

Yes, I'm being quite ruthless here, but I cannot help it.

Not sorry.

jeff

[Warren Gandy]

Ok, so I saw a comment about CDX. And Radiata as a specific brand that HD appears to carry. But I don't think I've ever seen pine plywood with plies as thin as this. I had, until now, speculated that pine didn't like to be cut that thin. If there is a US domestically available product like this, I would like to get my hands on some of it. I work with BB quite a bit for the strength and, more importantly, the stability. It's great for a lot of things. But I would love to have a domestic pine product that could get close to the same stability (on account of the high ply count) as another option.

Thanks for the comments everyone! I should hang out here more often.
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[Warren Gandy]

btw, I've been lumping Fir and Pine together so far in this thread. I should probably not do that. But my intended contrast was between these kinds of wood and Birch.

[Richard Coers]

Ok, so I saw a comment about CDX. And Radiata as a specific brand that HD appears to carry.
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Radiata is most often a plantation grown pine from Australia. It is not a brand.

[Mike King]

Evidently I'm the only one seeing the uber-coarse 50 grit scratch pattern, like they just yanked it off the shelf at the local home center? Looks like something you would build a chicken coop out of.

Call me a snob, but making something out of construction grade sheet goods and calling it furniture is a desperate new low. Until they push it long enough that the public accepts, evidently.
At least the BBirch had some redeeming qualities about it, like hardwood core/facing and a more subdued edge pattern of the thinner layers.
Wondered what the big manufacturers were going to do without it now. Just plain yuck.

Watch for the newest trend in furniture fashion, at your local retailer soon:
Highly refined OSB cabinetry. Feel the luxurious texture, marvel at it's void free core, the beauty of the naturally selected wafers of wood, all bonded together with the utmost of care.

Yes, I'm being quite ruthless here, but I cannot help it.

Not sorry.

jeff

There are people who seem to like the look of pine, and even of reclaimed barn wood, in their furniture. Not to my taste, but then to each their own. That is NOT CDX plywood from the big box store; there are no voids in the plies. It is most likely furniture grade plywood with pine veneer faces. And they likely "distressed" the veneers by deep sanding. Again, it may not be to my (or your) taste, but it is what some people want.

The sad part of it is that much of the general public doesn't see let alone value high quality custom woodworking. There's been a diminishment in the public's value of craft; evidence the demise of custom fine woodworking galleries.

[Warren Gandy]

Radiata is most often a plantation grown pine from Australia. It is not a brand.

Aha!

So, does this look like Radiata? And is plywood like this (thin plies) available in Australia? Southern CA?

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