Food for thought

As mentioned in another post I am going to build a bed for a customer.

This bed will require

2-60x60 1/2" thick sheets of Baltic birch 1- 4x8 1/4" birch plywood 1- 4x8 1/4" good 2 side red oak plywood 117- LF of 4/4 1x8 red oak

and

4- 4x8 sheets of 3/4" paint grade maple/birch plywood.

Unfortunately paint grade plywood these days just does not seem to be a very good quality. That seems to go for the exterior veneers that do not stay glued down when primed or painted with water based products. AND the panels are not and or do not remain flat. And finally the inner plies tend to be pretty crappy and the thickness of the material tends to vary in thickness through out the whole panel. This is what $45 gets you in domestic paint grade plywood.

Looking back on my past two jobs, the garage cabinets and the IT cabinet that I built for our veterinarian I used MDO instead of paint grade plywood. This material was a total joy to work with and I did not have to wrestle with it to make it fit into groves and dado's. Having a resin/paper outer veneer on both sides and quality inner plies, IMHO, makes this material very stable and much less prone to warp or bow. AND there is no tear out issue on the top or bottom of the cut, having no grain.

For the most part 98% of the 4 sheets of this 3/4" plywood material will not be visible, only the black painted bottom kick plates will be exposed. There will be 5- 14"x 76" 3/4" plywood support/drawer partitions that will be unseen. Straight/flat plywood is a very desirable feature to insure ease of assembly and smooth drawer movement.

Although I have already quoted a price for the bed I will probably upgrade to the MDO vs. the paint grade plywood if for no other reason to make my job easier. I'll gladly absorb the additional $120.00 for the better material.

Sometimes more expensive and better quality materials reduce the labor and frustration.