Category:Plywood

Hierarchy: Materials | Raw Material | Wood

From RISDpedia

Info taken from http://www.hstech.org/howto/material/plywood.htm

• Plywood. If you take a look at plywood, you'll see that it is indeed made up of a number of plies of wood. In other words, several sheets of very thin wood is sandwiched together to make a wooden board. Each ply is set in a 90° direction from the last. The top and bottom plies run the same direction

• Plywood comes in several grades. The grade refers to the surface covering. The better the grade, the nicer the surface. The grades are represented via letters, A, B, C, D, X.

1. AA is great stuff. It is smooth on both sides with no knot holes. It's used to build nice furniture type objects. Book shelves that are open, thus allowing both sides of the plywood to be seen
2. AC is more common. One side is the good stuff and the back is ok. We used AC for flooring that is going to been seen by audience members. That is, seen up close and that is not going to be covered with carpet, etc.
3. CDX is ugly stuff. But it's cheap and works. The surface has big unfilled knot holes on the back (D side). Keep in mind that since this is just the surface ply, it doesn't show through as a knot hole in a piece of wood would. This is perfect plywood to use on platform tops when the platform is also getting covered with something like Homosote.