Mayhaps they did, but they were wrong for construction ply -- I posted a link to at least one manufactuer's site that refutes the contention...altho iirc it wasn't actually that the size wasn't 4x8 but that the spec was metric rather than English units.
Construction sheet goods and cabinet-grade have always had differing measurement criteria; it's not at all unusual that the cabinet panel has sufficient overage to rip to a finished 2-ft width, but it's also much more a manufacturer-specific dimension rather than an industry standard as for construction material.
Actually after 30+ years of cutting cabinet quality panels and literally cutting hundreds, I have never ever seen a cabinet quality panel any other size but 4x8. So at least not all have ever been larger.
I was under the impression that larger sheets of this ply were a shop grade and used to rip, so that a person did not depend on a factory rip edge. john
Building materials are increasing in price.
Wider and longer panels surely cost more.
A few weeks ago someone posted an observation that plywood was no longer
4'x 8'.
I think a lot of us may have confirmed otherwise and or thought he may have confused the size of other sheet goods like MDF.
Anyway yesterday I bought 3 sheets of paint grade maple veneer plywood for the top cabinets that I am building for my wife's quilting studio.
Supposedly these are domestic and they appear to be the common 5 thicker inner plys and the two thin outer veneer plys.
All three measure 48-1/2" x 96-1/2".
No more going straight to a 16" OC stud wall if picture frame paneling a room.
But in my case the larger dimensions are welcome, no more worrying about a crappy factory edge.
Actually after 30+ years of cutting cabinet quality panels and literally cutting hundreds, I have never ever seen a cabinet quality panel any other size but 4x8. So at least not all have ever been larger.
Like you, I welcome to ability to correct crappy factory edges without losing dimensions. At a place I used to get plywood which went out of business (big surprise) some sheets would be longer or wider but only on one side making them slightly trapezoidal. This means you could no longer even count of the corners of plywood being square.
It is manufacturer-specific, but there are and always has been much more available in the cabinet panels than for just construction ply -- as just one example, see the product availability list from Atlantic Plywood or Baird Brothers
If you've always just shopped at a local distributor or particularly one of the box stores, it's not surprising that simply 48x96 is all you've seen, however; needs must first know it is available so can ask for it specifically or just happen to find it as you apparently did this time...
I learned of it many years ago from an old grouchy master cabinet maker/reproduction furniture builder in Lynchburg, VA, when was a very young pup first delving into woodworking as a sideline/hobby and wandered into his shop looking for some specialty hardware I'd been told he used occasionally. He ended up running me out of his shop that day as I inadvertently upset him by him thinking I was expecting "a deal" but he did order the hinges and when I went to get them I managed to repair the rift...I learned more from him in a few months of Saturday mornings spent in his shop as an forced-myself-upon-him "apprentice" than could begin to enumerate...
I buy from a trades specific supplier. they have their own mill so that make their own S4S lumber and moldings. They stock an indoor inventory of plywood that would probably fill half of an average sized Home Depot store. Literally tens of thousands of sheets. I have been buying from them since about 1989. They do offer about 2~3 grades of any particular species of plywood in domestic and import. Oddly I find that some of the stuff is precisely 3/4" thick.
...[big snip for brevity re: oversize cabinet ply]...
Again, the thickness is also not surprising as again, cabinet ply is a whole different animal than construction material and there's a market for the specific product despite cost. On the purchasing location, the fact is that you were still unaware of the oversize panels after all that time so what I said before is still true..."if you don't know to ask..." then you can continue to think that the nominal is all there is irrespective of how long it's been or where you're shopping. Again, this isn't intended at all as personal; simply that there has been a different product available all along and that there are both and that it is particularly wide variety of stuff in that market given that it isn't as much a mass-market target to a standard overall sheet dimension as in the construction ply business and where a few mils shaved off a sheet adds up to a much more sizable materials saving on the production side owing simply to volume produced in comparison.
At the time of which I was speaking of in Lynchburg (over 40 yr ago now), there was a small mill up in the mountains along the New River that had a hardwood veneer and ply mill operating as well as solid lumber. Back then the furniture business was rife all over N Carolina and particularly SW VA; the updated Lane facility in Alta Vista was almost brand new and employed several thousand alone and was just down the road 30 miles along with a bunch of other smaller manufacturers in the general Piedmont area...
As the link outlines, their fate was no better than that of virtually all US manufacturers what with corporate takeovers and "anything for a buck" management.
But at the same time, there were a number of these (relatively) small mills supplying the local and area manufacturers; most of which are also now either gone or vastly changed from what they were back then.
While he didn't cut for Lane or the other furniture mills, there was a one-man mill operation run by another old codger about as crusty as the aforementioned shop owner (but even older; he had to be 75 if he was a day when I first met him) whose prime target was timbers for the mines and ties for the railroads so he was cutting almost exclusively black locust and white oak. But, the cutters weren't always all _that_ exclusive in what they cut and if they had a good log in front of them, they would cut it so over the years he had accumulated quite a lot of cherry, walnut, old chestnut, etc., etc., as well. He would cut it and just stack it in sheds and sell it as he got a round tuit, the suppy of which was about as rare then as they are now. :)
I bought a lot of all the above at 10-cents a bf and if had had any sense (or any money as a newly-graduated kid w/ family and a mortgage) I'd have bought the lot on spec as an investment...I've often wondered who ended up with the gold mine when he finally passed as afaik he had no family.
Like you, I welcome to ability to correct crappy factory edges without losing dimensions. At a place I used to get plywood which went out of business (big surprise) some sheets would be longer or wider but only on one side making them slightly trapezoidal. This means you could no longer even count of the corners of plywood being square.
I just bought a couple of sheets of MDF and melamine. While they're certainly not "cabinet grade", that's what I'm using them for, more or less (shop "furniture"). They're all 49-1/16 x 97-1/16. It's kinda nice to not have to worry about the edges being a little bunged up.
This is not intended for construction, but rather for cabinetwork. The extra dimension allows for the kerf(s) when you want to cut several pieces from one sheet.
It is nice. I have been buying the over sized wood by product panels for years. It is scarey though when you tell the optimization program to draw a cutting diagram and it shows 3, 15.75" wide panels just fitting the drawing. and then you cut and end up with about 7/8" waste left over when there should be 3/8".
I understand exactly why the sheets are over sized, and I seriously doubt that the extra width is for kerf although is suppose that could be true. It would be next to impossible to guess how much kerf should be considered. BUT with thinner veneers and the surface being sanded away on the edges making the sheets 1/2" longer and wider takes care of getting rid of the factory edge.
AFWIW when do you really need 24" wide panels? Most cabinets are narrower than that.
And just a follow up on the construction vs. cabinet work use of hardwood veneer panels. Some of the hardwood veneer panels are used to cover and produce picture frame paneling. I'm absolutely no expert in that field but I have seen some of it during installation. These plywood panels are exposed and varnished. Seams covered with thin plywood strips and moldings used to cover the strip edges. I do not however recall if the panels were attached directly to wall studs.
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