In the last week or so I’ve noticed a new plywood product at the Home Depot – Sandeply – it’s 9 plys, 3/4″ thick, triple sanded and said to be good for painting and staining.
It only costs $29 a sheet, that’s pretty nice compared to the $45 I’m paying for Birch ply now!
Question is, anybody using this stuff?
Justin Fink – FHB Editorial
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Replies
Have not seen that yet. The local Lowes carries a product called blonde wood that is 7 ply and seems to be pretty nice. No obvious voids, smooth faces, decent price.
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
Yeah, I use it. My hardwood dealer has been selling it for three or four years, and now HD has it too. It is okay stuff, but has one odd behavior. With all those plies, you'd think it would be very stable, right? However, if you store it curved, it will take a set -- kinda like MDF.
It is a Columbia Forest Products, product.
http://www.sandeply.com/
And the face is Sande
http://www.columbiaforestproducts.com/products/experts.aspx?qid=1204
http://www.columbiaforestproducts.com/products/experts.aspx?qid=1202
Thanks Bill, I hadn't realized that "Sande" was a species name. I thought it was just a marketing strategy or something.Justin Fink - FHB Editorial
"I thought it was just a marketing strategy or something."I did to until I looked it up.
Well, either way it's a cheaper alternative to birch ply - which is hard for me to swallow when I know it's just going to get painted over anyway.Justin Fink - FHB Editorial
Justin
Around here I can get Chinese birch for $24 a sheet and its comparable to the birch ply that runs around $45.
I use it for all my interior cabinet work. It runs around 11/16" and varies some but not that difficult to deal with. I think its just as good as the $45 sheets of "american" birch.
Doug
The face veneer on the Chinese birch is crazy thin, although workable if you're careful. I have heard from others that the recent HomeDepot $29 China Birch that had the red glue lines was hard on blades. I used it for a bookcase and edged it with maple edging - looked nice, but had to be careful sanding it.JT
The face veneer on the Chinese birch is crazy thin,
Yea, have you ever seen the inside cores! I'ts kinda funny at times seeing whats inside. Even the outside veneer can be inconsistant.
I wouldnt use it for anything that had large amounts of visability but for inside of cabs it works OK. Same for Euro style cabs.
Most of my work has finish end panels so its never an issue for large surface areas being seen.
Doug
A cabinetmaker friend used the Chinese ply for toekicks and rough tops on a job we partnered on. The stuff was very noisy and slow to cut, and smelled terrible. He no longer uses it for those reasons. It seemed plenty strong, but these issues made it worth paying double for better material.I assume the Sandeply does not suffer from these problems.Bill
Buxtom hit it on the head. I saw the product, less than $20. Perfect for some paint grade bookshelves. I ripped pieces and stored them leaning against a workbench for maybe two days. They developed an arch and I got to go buy some birch to build my bookshelves.
Edited 11/3/2005 6:19 am ET by Hiker
SandePly
I tried it for some shop cabinets in my basement. The stuff is a mold MAGNET. I'm scared to keep it around and am thinking it may end up being reduced to kindling in the fireplace this winter. Granted it's been hot and humid here in the NE, but other wood, both plywood and solid stock have survived the weather just fine while this stuff is turning black with mold!
I built a jig for use in my shop with sandeply. Two days later it was covered in mold along all of the exposed edges. It seemed to me that the glue between the plys might be the food source for the mold. I sprayed the jig with bleach and water. Killed the mold and covered it with polyurethane. Worked but I won't buy any more.
I used to work in a shop for the better part of a decade using this plywood, maple/birch veneer and other similar products such as arauco ply (very nice if you can get it)
The key to the warping issue is storage. The material absorbs and releases moisture quickly, leading to massive warps if you aren’t careful, but it isn’t too hard to use. It has nothing to do with how it leans or if it’s stored flat or not, it isn’t like mdf or OSB in that respect. It’s all about moisture. We would buy it by the bunk and store it in our shop in Colorado. Here in CO, the air is pretty much always drier than wherever the wood came from, so once the banding was cut on a bunk, the sheets laying on top would always start to cup. Sheets that were stored vertically always did odd things as well. We thought the top of the ply was drying faster. We simply started keeping a sheet of plastic draped over the bunk. The results were amazing- they laid dead flat. Then we started just laying a sheet of coroplast on top of the bunk and even this eliminated most warping issues.
I now believe veneer plywoods seem to be more stable only because the lamination of the veneer acts like a low permeability layer, (similar to our plastic drape). I don’t think the core is anything special. Look at MDO. With its low perm resin paper lamination, it’s almost impossible to get it to warp. Is it because the wood inside comes from a mysterious forest where the pine is just so high quality that when you make plywood out of it’s just sooooo stable? No- Environmental moisture changes are simply equalized inside by the low perm facing.
So back to this product- I don’t think there is anything inherently bad about it, it’s just trickier to work with. For a diyer or general carpenter building a custom piece of furniture or cabinetry on site, I would pony up for veneer just for convenience of not having to deal with the warping issues. But for a larger scale operation in a shop, it’s easy enough to store it effectively, shoot some finish on the product in a timely fashion to reduce the permeability as soon as possible in the production process, and it’s just as good as anything else. For something like painted furniture or cabinet frames, there’s no reason to pay double for veneer just because it’s more stable before finishing.
We did notice that it will flash mold fast after exposure to water, such as if a bunk was left out in the rain, so there’s that, but really, any wood will mold if it gets wet. Definitely wouldn't use it for anything exterior though.
Not the best, but it has its place.
J