Plywood Desk In Progress

[JohnnyEgo]

So day 5, we cut a bunch of drawer parts.





And then my son went to bed and I recut every one of them out of Baltic Birch after reaching my absolute limit with this excremental Ecuadorian ply.




Which in light of Erni's recent post asking about materials for a 3D printer stand, gives me the opportunity to rant for the benefit of anyone new to the many variations of plywood:

Two pieces of plywood of the same thickness, approximately .40 inches and marketed as 1/2" ply. The top one is the Ecuadorian Sandeply, and the bottom is the Baltic Birch. The top piece consists of 5 layers laminated together. Two paper-thin veneers, two layers of some sort of combo of softwood and filler, and a center ply of indeterminant origin, but probably pine. The Baltic Birch on the bottom consists of 13 layers of all Baltic Birch, all the same size. Some of them are ugly. The two faces are nice, and considerably thicker than the Sandeply face veneers.


If you aren't routing grooves in it, and you don't sand through the paper thin veneers, the Sandeply is good enough for things like the carcass construction of the pedestals. But it was a nightmare when it came time to route anything in it. Like the drawer runner grooves, for instance.


The Baltic Birch veneer exposed when I routed this dado is ugly. But it's all one piece and consistent in character.


The Sandeply, on the other hand, is fill of fun voids between the cruddy softwood plies and whatever binder they used to fill it.


It also would not hold a clean routed edge. Every piece had some sort of nasty little surprise.


So moral of the story is if you are going to butt joint everything and then use a pair of metal drawer slides, the cheap ply will do the job. But if you are going to route anything, you definitely want to spring for something better than the cheap stuff at Home Depot.