Love that old Quarter Inch Plywood

[MilkyWhy]

Stopped by a building being demolished and went inside. Had a hundred panels of old, quarter-inch plywood (almost always painted pale green on one side). I offered the guy a dollar a panel for each one he salvaged and removing nails. I loaded up my storage building with these 4 by 8 foot boards.

I just LOVE this good old thin plywood. It's a joy to work with, stronger than flakeboard crap of today, so light and easy to move into place. They just made the stuff BETTER, 50 years ago, than the crap of today.

[Red Neckerson]

Gee, grandpa! Can you tell us the one about how you used to walk 5 miles to school with burlap bags on your feet????

[Philip Lewis]

burlap!?! we had to weave our shead eylashes in to bags if we wanted something to put on our feet.... and that's for the few of us that had hair! ;)

I too find that wood in general is of much poorer quality these days. (and i'm only 33) I look at plywood and dimensional lumber and plywood from the 70s-80s and only see that in the "premium" stacks these days.

If you look hard, you can find good wood in the stacks, but i'd estimate that it's only 1 in 10 pieces in my personal experience. (of course, i'm looking for the closest i can get to quarter-sawn as i can get... usually getting a just "off" center cut.)

[John Hines]

One can still buy really good plywood these days, but it is sold for making furniture, not houses.

[Ed Clarke]

Boy, it was five miles UPHILL to get to school and five miles UPHILL to get back. In two feet of snow. With wolves chasing us. We were tough in those days not like the candy-ass kids today.

However - old growth wood is a lot stronger than second or third growth timber. It's a matter of cost; the old stuff is used up (mostly) and the new stuff is not as hard or strong. Flakeboard is chips of real wood in a matrix of glue. Heavy and reasonably strong, it makes use of what used to be thrown away.

[Abe]

-------------------- You guys had feet! Boy, in our day we didn't have any fancy feet. We had to roll to school in the mud.

[Charles Spitzer]

at least you had arms to push yourself along with

[Art]

When I was a kid, we had to get up and walk over to the TV to change the channel.

[Donald Gares]

[Warren Weber]

And it is a True 1/4 inch? This new plywood size stinks when you are trying to match repairs on old stuff. W W

[Zemedelec]

Amen. zemedelec

[Box134]

Of course, there were two channels in those days, if your TV was anything like mine! I'd hate to get up to surf through 75 channels.

[ameijers]

(snip)

What he said. The cheap (aka nearby) supplies of good wood are mostly used up, other than in the preserve areas, where they should STAY unmolested so our great-great grandkids can see what real trees look like. Used to use what would now be furniture-grade 1/4 inch ply for soffits, and clear-grain or even redwood for fascia board. I could cry thinking of all the scraps I threw on the burn pile as a kid. Who knew? Nowadays, a 2-3 foot stick of clear grain anything, you stick it in the save box for a rainy day.

(yeah, we used to burn on-site back then, even in town. different world.)

aem sends...

[Stormin Mormon]

And did you have to pump the handle at the sink to get water? And look for splinters when you sat in the outhouse?

[Joe Fabeitz]

We don't get no respect!