prep plywood edge to paint

[Rich Engelhardt]

Jason,
Thanks!
I'll see if I can find the Crawfords since I hate using the light weight stuff.
If I have to use the LW stuff, I guess I'll just have to grin and bear it.

[stephen wood]

+1 on the real wood edging. Much more durable than any kind of filler or iron on edging. Surly you have enough scrap boards around the shop to do this. If you don't have a thin strip jig for your TS, they are easy to make and plans for them are everywhere.

In considering this solution I'm concerned that I'll have a lot of seams/connections that might telegraph through the paint. Picture a piece of plywood with a 8 x 12 rectangle cut out of it. I would be applying strips to the inside edges of that cutout, then strips around the edges of the door that fits in the cutout.

[Curt Harms]

I often use Bondex water putty wood filler. It's a dry powder that I mix to suit. It can be sanded & painted as soon as it looks dry, usually less than 30 minutes. It's normally a tan color but I suspect I could tint it any color I like with transtint.

[Larry Browning]

In considering this solution I'm concerned that I'll have a lot of seams/connections that might telegraph through the paint. Picture a piece of plywood with a 8 x 12 rectangle cut out of it. I would be applying strips to the inside edges of that cutout, then strips around the edges of the door that fits in the cutout.

There is a down side to every method you might use to cover the edge. Even using all solid wood has a down side. It is not as stable as plywood. You just have to look at all the options and pick the one that has the best solution for you. I'm just saying if it were me I would go for the durability of real wood edging.

[Ron Natalie]

I've been edging plywood cabinet with veneer tapes for years. The edge isn't going to have any more stability problems than the veneer on the plywood face. Glued down to a relatively stable substrate it isn't going to have enough force to move against that.

[Alan Lightstone]

Real wood edging. Done the spackle many times. Never really liked it.

[Mike Heidrick]

I used 50/50 water/glue on MDF edges and then pimed the entire pieces with BIN primer from Lowes. When I painted it folks thought it was plastic.

[Walter McNeil]

Ditto to veneer edge banding. Treating the edges of plywood so that they look/behave like the faces of the plywood is exactly what it is designed to do.
I just can't believe that any kind of filling or spackling treatmetn of the edge will hide the end-grain/side-grain transitions without exhaustive preparation.
Iron-on may be tough in the interior corners, but peel-and-stick does a great job.

[Ron Natalie]

I've not had issues using the tapes either using a regular clothes iron or now with my junk sale handheld banding iron. Inside corners work fine. You can make butt joints or miters on outside just by overlapping and trimming with an exacto knife before applying heat to the corners. I've got a specialty overhang trimmer (which won't reach into the corners) but just using a chisel flat on the perpendicular surface works fine.

[David Winer]

Although it is harder to work with when a high degree of finish quality is paramount I like to use auto body filler (Bondo) in this and similar applications it sands and finishes very well (better then all the alternatives). In trim applications I have used all of the above mentioned products with fine results for trim but for something closer to furniture Bondo is the king for me, again accepting it is more of a pain to use.

Bondo should be a very good substance for filling plywood irregularities. (Haven't tried it myself for this purpose.) I always thought it was widely known, but apparently not. The stuff first came to my attention from a pro canoe repairer as a way to fill a deep scratch in the filled canvas cover of a wooden canoe. He told me that it is widely used for auto body dents. It worked beautifully and ever since I keep a tube on hand. Apply with a slightly flexible scraper and sand. What I like especially is the way it can be smoothed to match the surrounding surface without the patch showing through the paint. My guess is that Bondo is much less likely to chip out than spackling compounds.

[scott vroom]

I glue & pin nail 3/4" x 1/2" hard maple to hide plywood cabinet shelf edging. It will outlast and outwear all the other solutions.

[stephen wood]

thanks for all the advice! I'm going to try a couple of the solutions on scrap and see which I like for this application.