Just pulled a sheet of ply I had laying around. Made in Canada by Columbia.. From the cut I made the thickness varies in the piece by 1/32. I have not seen that b4. I cut it, it's supposed to fit in a dado, and it does on one side, but not on the other... when I put a caliper on it the answer my friend was blowing in the wind.. it wasn't me for a change..
Yep, feel your pain ... something you have to deal with, plywood, or dimensioned wood.
Too thick, easy to sand down a bit in the appropriate spot; too thin, out comes shims/shavings/filler/combination thereof to fill the gap.
It's bad when thickness changes sheet to sheet, but can be expected and planned for by buying enough of the same stack/batch to finish a project.
A bitch when thickness varies in the same damn sheet.
Even with my limited experience, I have seen lots of irregularity in plywood. During my first project with lots of dadoes, I found that one of the three sheets was thicker than the other two (bought at the same time). The discrepancy was large enough to prevent the thicker ones from fitting in the dadoes I had cut.
I had to test each piece, mark the dadoes that needed to be expanded (I believe it was something like 8 out of 40) and then line each one up in the dado jig to make a very fine extra pass with a router.
As Karl just said, diff from sheet to sheet is normal. but within a sheet is just wrong.
Now we know where that imported plywood comes from, I always assumed it was from China. ;~)
I was at one of the local lumber yards here last week to get a special size d door for a retro and was talking to them about their recent push to sell plywood. According to them (Roddis Lumber - you may have them in Houston) their plywood comes from different sources. A lot of hardwood faced materi als come from our Canadian brothers. These guys have some overseas stuff, but strangely not much from South America.
That stuff they have been selling at HD for the last 10-12 years is from Ch ile and has some kind of white face on it that resembles a very poor exampl e of birch. I don't know what it is, but the only thing I can put on it wh en finishing is a quick dry product. I don't know what kind of wood they u se for that face, but it has to be something very soft as it is a cut venee r that must be (literally) about 1/64 thick. And with the inconsistency of the the underlayment, I have actually sanded through the veneer several ti mes. OK for a utility cab that I am painting, nasty for some better work.
At this time, I don't know that they carry any wood products from North Ame rica except their structural members and structural plywoods.
Robert
I have used a good bit of the HD mystery ply, always for painted carcasses, seems to do fine for that, never tried any other finish.
basilisk
Gotta love modern sheet goods, right? That variation is one - main - reason I avoid full width dadoes. Instead, I use a narrower one and cut a tongue on the ply leaving - usually - 1/8" shoulders. That gets me a tongue closer to the the right width throughout; if a variation remains, the shoulders hide any boo-boos.
I hate to day this but I find that it is a 50/50 chance that imported might be better than domestic.
Consumer product quality has taken a nosedive whether the product was made in North America or anywhere else in the world. The Wallmart mentality of accepting lower quality for a lower price has come full circle.
Why should a manufacturer waste money on quality. The consumers only want a bargain.
Look on the bright side. If we learn how to produce absolute junk maybe the jobs will come back.
LdB
Columbia Forest Products are made in the US and Canada. One of the reasons I generally like them for utility oak plywood, plus the fact that are glued without formaldehyde based glues.
That said, and ironically enough, the plywood I seem to have the most consistency with, fewer voids, and at a better price, is indeed the ubiquitous, utility plywood - "China Birch".
LdB wrote in news:qPednQYSJfRInZjOnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@supernews.com:
As I've lamented before, it seems to vary, lot to lot. A few years back I shared my angst over the China Birch I got that wasn't even friggin SQUARE or straight.
Home Depot had a pallet load of what looked like nice plywood this past fall. It was labeled "cabinet grade" and the description was maple on one side and birch on the other.
It "looked" great and it was $38 a sheet for 3/4" plywood.
Wellllll, this past week I finally got around to cutting some of that plywood.
ALL of the outer edges looked great with what appeared to be
13 ply plywood.The voids didn't show up till a few rips later when I noticed that several pieces has ugly looking edges.
To say I was "miffed" would be a mild understatement.
Soooo, I now have some nice $38 firewood.
Sometimes, I just never learn.......
Feel your pain ... although, just bought (on Sunday when all the other suppliers are closed and I needed a sheet of paint grade, now) 4x8x3/4" "cabinet grade" Pine (of all things) plywood from Home Depot for $33.97.
I was pleasantly surprised - flat, square, and the few voids were relatively minor:
Columbia Forrest Products, formaldehyde free ... you pays your money and you takes your chances.
I already did that routine a 10 or so years ago. When I got it home all of it curled up before I got it into my rack. Again Columbia... I have a rack that's true (used string to get all the supports in line), and I clamp them to it vertically.
I'm hesitant to buy sheets from HD.
About 5 years ago HD had a pallet of cabinet birch, 13 ply for $23 a sheet! I took one home purely out of curiosity. I cut that bad boy up for a couple projects over the course of the next week and it was better than some sheets I've paid 70 bucks for.
I went back to HD and looked all over for it but it was gone. I was going to buy every last sheet they had. I asked the guy at the contractor desk about it and he said the pricing, in fact the delivery of the stuff, was a big mistake and they sold out of it that day. He said they mistake price was about 50% of their cost. :-)
Sounds like a gloat to me... you suck...!! I guess I could live with defects at that price. You sound like you had none....
I haven't bought any in a year or so, but the last time I bought Oak ply from Lowes, it was pretty good except that the veneer was about as thick as a picture of Oak. The Birch was OK, too, but better not go wild sanding. It was cheaper than sanded pine, so I thought it was a good deal.
really a picture is pretty thick compared to what I see. 1/64 is thick.. I don't think most of the veneers are that thick.
I have some very old ply from some old furniture 40s - 50s. The veneer is about 1/8 "... I am so amazed how far we have fallen.
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