I have never built a Chippendale Cherry chest of drawers, or a Teakwood napkin holder with hand chiseled dovetail joints for that matter. I like to build cabinets, loud speakers, and I have a 1930's step hydroplane on my bucket list. My material of choice is really good plywood. Should someone ever instantiate a fusion reactor that cleanly powers our rapacious and unsustainable need for power it may nudge plywood from the #1 greatest innovation of my lifetime, but not by much. Duct tape will be in any accounting, regardless.
Rather than hide plywood like some crazy family member relegated to the attic, I would like to keep it in a rocker on the front porch. I love the laminations that seem like the striations of sea shells and other naturally alternating layers of sediment, tissue, and dreams. So, in designing the legs, stretchers, and rails of a work bench I want to use laminates of plywood rather than solid hard maple or the other favored but costly hardwoods. I am also intrigued by employing longer laminate layers in the build up as tenons and spacer mortise blanks that can be knocked out when the laminations of 3 to 5 sheets of cut ply dry and become a leg, stretcher, or rail. It can all fit together quite nicely when cut ahead of time and then assembled.
There is the case that more is not necessarily better, and I have experienced too much of a good thing at times in my life. So this question goes out to the experienced wood workers and or engineers in the Creek. If one were constructing a stretcher between bench legs that was 60"x6" and a couple inches thick, one could laminate enough 60"x6" pieces of ply to comprise a couple inches of material and make the stretcher. It seems to this caveman that the strength of having the laminates directed vertically, up and down would produce a stronger stretcher than multiple 60"x2" laminates built up horizontally to 6" tall. But visually the sight of 6" of 2" wide laminates is more appealing than 6" of the outer face of the plywood in an application that wants to show off as many laminates as possible.
So, is there a structural difference in the functional competence of a 60"x6" stretcher going leg to leg across the front of a trestle leg bench with the laminates of plywood going side by side to make a 2" thick stretcher or stacking multiple 60"x2" strips of plywood laminated up to make a 6" tall stretcher?
Ha! And you thought it was going to be a Friday night with no questions about the fundamental meaning of life!