Rabbeting and grooving Plywood with handtools?

Re: Rabbeting and grooving Plywood with handtools?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>It certainly is different from solid wood, all glue and veneers and gunk, very hard on tool edges. LV carries a plywood hand saw that works very well. As to planing, very difficult to plane veneer, but I suppose you could plane a rebate if you're prepared to do a lot of sharpening, same with chiselling.

Pam

Re: Rabbeting and grooving Plywood with handtools?

Jack Guzman from Maine

>I try to avoid plywood as much as possible.The glue in plywood dulls edges.When I do work with it I revert to power tools. Plywood is handy for drawer bottoms and case backs but for carcases I like solid wood.Either glued up full width or frame and panel.Whatever the wood movement requirements are.---Jack

Re: Rabbeting and grooving Plywood with handtools?

Wiley Horne

>Dominic,

I don't own a 45, but have a set of woodie dado planes, and they have no problem cutting dados in ply. You have a scoring blade running ahead of the cutter that knifes in both sides of the channel as you work your way down. The only issue I see is that the exit blade cut might be a little ragged unless it's baltic birch ply--if it's got that loose fill, that stuff would probably tear out on the exit cut. If the glue dulls the tool, sharpen. Not a problem.

Are you going to put a hardwood face frame on the plywood? If so, it would make a nicer looking case (IMO), plus allow you to make your dado cut all the way through (not stopped).

Wiley....what you need is some woodie dados, Dom. Oh yeah, and a moving filletster too....also a couple of_______

PS

Wiley Horne

>In ply, you could also use the dado plane as your plough, up against a clamped down (or nailed down) fence. You'd be a assured a clean cut that way.

Wiley

Thanks everyone

Dominic Greco in Richboro PA

>Thanks for all the advice. Unless I find some woodies before I start (Thanks for teh push Wiley!) I believe that I will be using some power tools when it comes to working with plywood.

Dominic

Re: Rabbeting and grooving Plywood with handtools?

wilbur

>"....he asked, "How do you cut cross grain stopped dados in plywood using hand tools?

Going off tangent for a second -- I thought plywood was made with each layer having its grain orientation perpendicular to the next. So wouldn't the idea of "cross grain" in plywood only refer to the orientation of the cut relative to the outermost layer? To my mind, the actual mechanics of making the cut would be the same.

The good thing about plywood is that it gives you a reason to have a "beater" set of tools that you don't mind being potentially nicked up due to the glue in the plywood. So this gives you the perfect reason to start duplicating your plane collection. :@)

Re: Rabbeting and grooving Plywood with handtools?

HB

>I just built a hanging cabinet using handtools and I also used some real POS plywood for the carcase. I just treated it like regular solid wood. Cut dovetails in it and dadoes and had no problems. Didn;t notice any significant dulling of the tools either.

It can be done. I will be making another cabinet the same way except for this one I am using baltic birch plywood so I expect that this may be a little easier to work with.

For stopped dadoes, I drag the dado plane backwards across the wood a couple of times to define the edges of the dado with it;s nicker, then I use a forstner bit to excavate the stopped end of the dado and then I use a saw in the grooves left by the plane to cut in the edges. Then remove the waste with a chisel and clean up the groove with a router plane.

Good Luck.

HB

I thought I recalled Rob Brophy saying something

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>about this, and commenting that a 45 works fine for dados in plywood. Someone like that, at least.

Re: Rabbeting and grooving Plywood with handtools?

ThomD

>Tha's not really true. I once used the same crap japanese plane for a six month build of a boat. It planed lots of ply, lots of softwood, and some fiberglass. It survived the whole thing without once sharpening the edge. It pretty much ruined the dai, but that was american white oak, so not really a problem. I don't think planing across glue lines is all that bad on a good blade, but planing right in the phenolic glue line is rough, and you can run into that with dadoes. Though usually you could use that as a backboard to split it out of. you still need to get past the glueline since not much glues to it.

I usually burn scarphs in ply, I have a vac jig, but I hand plane the really thin stuff, first I ramp a bunch of layers, and then I plane it so all the lines are parallel. and the feathers are super sharp. It just planes like wood.

There is some marvelous ply out there. Like aircraft ply that is as thick as a business card and three perfect layers. When you figure out how to make a perfect panel of .2MM veneers let me in on it because I would like to know.

Re: Rabbeting and grooving Plywood with handtools?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Gee, Thom, good morning. My experience is that using edges on glue is tough on the edges, chipping and dulling. Glad you've had different experiences, maybe you had much more expensive plywood? Or at least much better formed? I'm not trying to compete with a machine veneerer.

Pam