Making a DVD cabinet, and was thinking of saving some $$ to use oak ply for shelves and edge them. Anything wrong with this?
The shelved are actually quite small (maybe 6'x7" each, but there are
20 of them).
For anything but really high end work, go for it...
Only if you're selling it and representing it as solid wood, fine furniture.
For items like shelves, built-ins, and cabinets, plywood can actually outperform solid stock. I've even cut plywood, splined it, and reglued it to create a glued-up board look. Carefully done, with plywood made from good quality veneer, it's quite convincing.
Barry
Now I feel really stupid. That is a clever idea (that I never thought of).
-- Igor
How does it outperform solid wood? Most solid hardwoods can handle loads in excess of PLY?
Yes ply is acceptable... absolutely.. but I don't know other than price how it outperforms solid hardwood.
I like the spline and reglue idea, but with my luck I would be out enough to not be able to clean it up without sanding thru..
I d> Larry Bud wrote:
No. Not at all. BUT, if you are only using 20% of the sheet of plywood sometimes hard wood is cheaper with less waste.
The key is to buy oak veneered plywood that is refered to as "flat sliced veneer", not "rotary cut" There's nothing cheap about veneered plywood, it's regularly used in high-end cabinets. I use cherry and tiger maple veneered ply regularly. It's very expensive.
Not cross grain
Stability
Odd, I think it is terrible idea. I put a lot of work into matching to avoid seeing glue lines, and he is creating them for no purpose. Well, each to his own.
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That's the way to make it look closest, though I'm curious what thickness ply you'll be using. 6x7 shelves suggest some 1/4 resawn solid stock to me. Probably a push in price, and no hassle with edging.
Yes, for shelves there is not nearly as much stress across the grain as the length...
toller wrote:
Sometimes the wood is not very intersting and breaking it up can help to make it more interesting.... sometimes it can be disturbing..
Nothing wrong. Ply is strong and dimensionally stable. It does have ugly edges to contend with though.
I'd say in this day and age "solid wood" could even include ply, as long as it's real ply, with real veneer, and everything is tastefully done. I have a $5 auction special desk made of solid oak, but some sections of the oak are rotated perpendicular to other sections. I don't see that as a problem quality wise. (Especially since I got it for $5. I've gloated about that too many times in the past to re-gloat it though.) Except for the obvious banding around the top, it's not at all obvious that any of it is ply.
When used for built-ins and shelving, it's much more stable.
Barry
Last year I made a desk add on for my wife - Looked better than the original commercial work. I recently added a large pull-out tray for holding paper work while doing accounting. The original desk was Particle board (not even MDF) - with melamine pickled Oak finish.
On the original work I used Rotary saw veneer Oak 3/4 and 5/8 ply - and made oak banding out of a small piece of Oak. Even did steam bending of the banding for the curved cut-outs at the bottom.
The tray was going to be a quick "batch job" since I did not have a clear piece of oak left for the banding - and the tray was made of scrap plywood from the original project.
I glued two 10"wide ply pieces for the tray -- roughly 20" X 20" glued up. Then, I hid the seam with a strip of Walnut -- since the seam was pretty bad actually. After looking at the effect, I canceled the trip to buy some more Oak. I finished the tray with walnut edging. The contrast looks nice, and the ugly seam is now a "feature" with the walnut inlay. The dark trim around the "pickled Oak" finish looks great. All the wood except the walnut was scrap. So total cost of the tray is about $.51 ($.01 for the glue, $.50 worth of walnut :-) Plus labour -- about 2 hours including finishing.
So just use your imagination. Even consider contrasting materials.
For the heck of it I will post a link to the desk later -- showing the original add on and the "new" style..
Larry Bud wrote:
Here is a desk project with Oak Banding and Oak plywood.
The infamous scrap wood tray is there as well -- trimmed with walnut.
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