What's Up With Plywood???

[Larry Frank]

I have used the Aruaco plywood from Menards and very good quality. Last week, I drove up to Chicago to buy Baltic Birch from Owl Hardwood and the quality was excellent. I think there is good plywood available but you have to find it and pay for it.

I do not buy from HD because of the way they store it on racks and the waves in it.

[Art Mann]

Having read this thread, I believe that some people may not know the difference between real Baltic Birch plywood imported from Russia or other Baltic countries and the cheaper domestic Birch veneer plywood. I have bought good domestic Birch plywood but there is no comparison between it and the premium imported material.

[Tom Bain]

I guess I'm fortunate to have a couple local specialty lumber/building materials suppliers that stock decent cabinet grade plywood, but it's not cheap. I never use plywood from Home Depot or Lowe's in a woodworking project.

[Greg Parrish]

Definitely not a forklift thing. It's a "I don't care because I don't have to" thing. When people stop buying it, they will change their ways.

Everyone knows, they all monitor their sales on a daily basis.

Problem here is that wood workers are not buying it, but carpenters and home builders are buying it by the delivery and truck load. Probably not because of best pricing but because of credit incentives and other reasons. Regardless, for rough exterior and interior walls and what not usage on job sites, I don't think "MOST" contractors care. They slap it up and move on. The home buyer is getting the problems to deal with later when they start showing up. Regardless, as long as they are selling this in bulk they will never care much about the few pallets they put on the rack for us to complain about as we pick through 20 sheets to find one decent one.

[Brian Henderson]

I used to have a great hardwood and plywood supplier near my house, then I moved 75 miles away and found that my old supplier is still the closest one and now it's on the other side of a mountain. You'd think that there would be another supplier locally considering the housing trade is going like gangbusters and there's a Lowes or Home Depot every couple of blocks, but there isn't. Still, I've found that, at Lowes at least, they have some decent quality oak and maple faced ply that I've used and seems to give good bang for the buck, but who knows how long that'll last.

[Art Mann]

Around here, no quality house builder would buy a majority their materials from HD or Lowes. Not only is the quality wildly variable, but they don't provide the level of customer service the builders demand. For basic lumber in volume quantities, the price is also too high. On the other hand, the building supply place I order specialty materials from is almost completely uninterested in walk-in customers. They deal mostly with contractors and phoned in delivery orders.