Home Depot's Ply

[David Less]

Hi Creekers,

Making a large vanity cabinet and will use oak ply for the back, bottom and inside dividers. Can anyone tell me if Home Depot's oak ply is any good? It says it is made in Canada, which is better than made in China. It is alot cheeper than what my cabinet supply house gets, like almost half the price.

Thanks for the help,

David

[Lee DeRaud]

I've used quite a bit of it in the past, and was happy with the results. But it's one of those deals where you may have to go through the whole stack to get four or five good sheets. (For no apparent reason, the 2x4 "handy-panels" are usually better than the full 4x8 sheets.)

And I wouldn't count on them using the same supplier from one month to the next (or one region to the next).

[Mitchell Andrus]

I ALWAYS check the racks at the Borg when I'm there. Once in a while some really good stuff shows up, esp. in the 2'x4' and 4'x4' bins.

[Jeffrey Makiel]

I have used a fair amount of the oak ply from them and it's OK. One thing to note is that the veneer on their plywood is usually 'rotary cut' versus 'plain slice'. It may also contain more voids within the interior plys versus the better stuff.

Rotary slice is a little like construction grade plywood with distorted fat grain rings. It is not very pleasing to me even though it's oak.

Plain slice looks much better to me and is usually what is sold at better hardwood/sheetgood suppliers for furniture and cabinet use. It looks almost like glued-up boards often with a book matched look. The grain pattern is usually much straighter because it is sliced off the log instead off rotary peeled off the log.

cheers, Jeff

[Gary Keedwell]

Jeff,

Very good point...one that is not very often brought up in this forum. Alot of people go to the store and don't know what their looking at.
Gary K.

[Howard Acheson]

Home Depot sells "B-2" grade oak plywood. The "B" means it is not of as high an appearence as "A" grade but it it structurally as sound. It should be just fine for your application.

[David Less]

Thanks, Creekers, it makes sense what you've said. Here again, you get what you pay for even with wood.

David

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

I Like to get as many plys as possible when buying cabinet grade. The Borg doesn't inventory what I prefer.
That said I have had some success with their 1/2" birch.

[Guy Germaine]

Like Michael says, always check it out while you're there. you never know what you'll find. This was a leftover piece of 1/2" Birch Ply from a bookcase project. I found it at HD:

[Laurie Brown]

I usually buy oak ply at Lowes, and you have to be careful when selecting your sheet. Sometimes when they have holes or imperfections in the veneer they make a half-a**ed attempt to fill the holes with some kind of filler, which is noticable and awful. I got a sheet with some of that one it on one side last time I bought without checking carefully. Luckily the wood was for a cabinet and the outsides won't be visible once the cabinet is installed, so I used it with the bad parts out. Otherwise I'd have taken it back for another piece. As it was I had the employees upset since I had gone through almost the whole pile to find the best two sheets I could.

[Jim Becker]

My kitchen cabinets are built from HD birch ply. I did have to carefully select each sheet, but it was servicable for what my needs were at the time. I don't build with plywood very much, however, but if I did, I'd probably find a way to make a relationship with a proper supplier for more consistant quality without all the time wading through the heavy piles.

The comments above about the rotary cut veneer on the oak ply are spot one...you can always tell that it's plywood 'cause boards look very different. What you might consider is using it (or birch) for the show-side of the interior and then laminate 1/4" oak veneer for your outside panels. You'll only need a smaller quantity of the "good stuff" that way. That is my intention for some of the cabinetry for our addition to save some funds.

[Mike Henderson]

I've not had good experiences in buying plywood at the borg. I often get ply where the outer layer is not well glued and there are lots of voids on the inside. For a few dollars more, I buy from a specialty hardwood supplier or a company in this area who specializes in Baltic birch.

Mike

[Charles McKinley]

My last batch was rotary on one side and sawn veneer on the other. I haven't used a lot of it but have had good luck so far. The problems mentioned above do need to be looked for and the veneer is thin.

[Paul Comi]

I live in the suburbs of the Los Angeles area and the closest place to buy cabinet grade plywood is 40 mins each way so I have often bought oak and birch ply from one a couple local Home Depot stores.

The oak ply in my area has always been cheap China ply and the birch is rarely flat. The last project I built was a painted vanity and I used HD veneer plywood out of convenience, but it required asking the store guys to pull down a new load of sealed plywood from the racks. In the time it took to have them close the aisles and finally get it down with a forklift I could have driven to the valley and had premium quality veneer ply for my project.

From now on, that's what I'm going to do. When I was just starting to build things and most of my projects were shop grade I could tolerate a lesser quality of sheet, but when you end up having trouble squaring up cabinets because the sides have a slight warp to them, or when making drawers with a dovetail jig there is excessive delamination or tear out, its a false economy to buy that stuff.

[Byron Trantham]

If its of any consequence, I recently bought several sheets of oak ply from my local distributor (not HD). When I got them home they were fine. I cut them down to size and moved them to my shop for final sizing. The next day a lot of the pieces had warped! I paid a good price for the stuff. I'm in the middle of a project but I saved one one the pieces to take back to my supplier to ask what gives. I won't buy from HD. The last time I bought from them I had to scrap the project and start over. Some of it was warped and the birch was birch on one side and maple on the other. I went back to the store and re-read the label on the bin and sure enough it said BIRCH plywood but it also said in fine print "and maple veneers". The finish was terrible in that it didn't match by any stretch of the imagination. At this juncture I am not sure what to do other than to complain to my distributor.