Hand tools and plywood

Re: Hand tools and plywood

Jack Guzman from Maine

>The only thing I can think of is the fact that the glue may dull your tools quicker.Otherwise,it's still wood.---Jack

Re: Hand tools and plywood

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>Hand tool technology predates plywood. Virtually all our hand tool operations are done with an eye to grain orientation- we have techniques for across the grain or with the grain or working "down hill" on sloping grain. Working plywood is clumsy for a hand tool woodworker. And as Jack mentioned plywood is hard on edge tools.

I have a brother=in-law who is a doctor. Years ago he wanted me to make him something out of plywood and he just could not accept my reluctance. Finally I said "you don't operate on turtles and I don't operate on plywood."

Re: Hand tools and plywood

Frank D. in Montreal

>I don't hesitate to use birch plywood if it's a better option than solid wood. Just pretend that you're working cross grain and you'll be OK (get out those nickers, or cut shoulders with a saw or knife), I treat plywood much like regular wood--I saw, joint and even flatten and shape it with hand tools. If the glue dulls the blades more quickly, it hasn't really been a problem for me.

Re: Hand tools and plywood

Ted Owen, Pittsburgh

>I use less expensive tools on plywood. Won't let my best planes ever touch plywood.

Best, Ted

Agree

Wiley Horne--So. Cal.

>As Frank says, for dados and grooves, surface splintering is the main problem. Solution is to score all plough, dado, and fillester cuts. Japanese mortise gauge is good for scoring plough cuts.

Wiley

My experience

jim reed @ tallahassee

>is that plywood is pretty nasty for planes to deal with. I sure do not like to use my good ones on plywood. It is brittle and tough--kinda like a board full of knots. I avoid knots with my handplanes for the same reasons. Short and choppy strokes, alternating hard and soft, all cause stress. This stress puts dings in the blade and upsets delicate adjustments. It is like chopping up frozen food with a kitchen knife. I do it from time to time, but not with my good knives.

Re: Hand tools and plywood

ThomD

>I use a variety of tools for plywood, which is a wonderful material from which to build a variety of things, like boats, aircraft, etc...

Lee Valley in pre-A2 decades used to sell tools/blades that were designed for man made materials. Normally high speed steel. But I normally use a combination of japanese and old cast steel tools.

Lee Valley sells a Japanese plywood saw that I have had great results with. I'm sure some of those impulse hardened western saws with japanese teeth would be good. Woodworking is about cutting across grain and splitting with the grain. Same deal here but the crossplys make it like 3D checkers, compared to regular checkers. you want to think about how your process might be adjusted depending on what layers you cut through, or end up in. Terminating in which layer will give you the best glue bond and grain tie-in. Also, sometimes you get fast neat result by cutitng to the glue line since it's hard but you don't want the glue in the joint since it doesn't bond well. It's mostly just woodworking, but it you just need to unpack it layer by layer.

Plywood dovetails nicely. I have make large pieces of casework that way for stuff like hot boxes, orsome strutural applications, like i use some in a high tech guitar I make. Nobody would know it was there, but it was just the best material/joint for the job.

Plywood has a reputation for cheapness which isn't always deserved. There are two things about it that are cheap, often One is that it's made out of rotary veneer, which is one of the reasons it's somewhat weird and occasionally seems to have properties worse that the underlying wood, of which better ply is minimally a veneer grade example of. The other thing is that it mostly is made to a tight bugget. Where else can you get possybly 300 square feet of veneer for 40-60 dollars, glued together and cut to size?

I never worry about using high quality wood or metal planes on it, though normally I don't need planes with a super fine cut when working the stuff.

ROTFL !

s.mackay@worldnet.att.net

>

I don't let mine touch it.

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>Then again I hardly ever use it either.

plywood history

Stephen in Utah

>Not only is it the glue that dulls your tools the included knots, bark, dirt, rocks, debris in modern plywood can wreck havoc on tools. However plywood has some history. First produced to make the curved and flat panels of carriages and light wagons in the 1820's. Three layers of whitewood (poplar, basswood, etc.) and even bent for dashes and curved panels, glued with hide glue and alum. Mostly sawed to shape I do not think that they had any joints cut into them.

I have seen earlier examples of plywood, a pianoforte 1806, walnut core with rosewood veneer laid cross grain on both sides, for a panel.

Stephen

Here's why I'm asking

wilbur

>For the record, what I'm looking to do is make a shelf for a small utilitarian workbench, and I wanted to put some vertical dividers, hence the need for dados. Since this is just for a workbench, made with 2x4 material, no less, I didn't think it would be worth the effort to glue up a panel just for this.

I use a lot of baltic birch...

John in New Mexico

>I'll even use hand tools on it, though the glue can be pretty hard stuff. No shame in using a quality product, even if the grain does go both ways.

Re: plywood history

ThomD

>I don't want to blow anyones' mind, but there are bark and mineral inclusions in regular wood also. :) Obviously it can be important to keep the cover story in place for never doing any real work and just playing with the tools. I have used my wooden planes on fiberglass, so I don't think a little bark will blow it up, if it saves me time I'm all for it. As Franz Klausz says "Hand work IS production!"