plywood for school desks?

[overland]

We just finished a batch of school desks using maple plywood from Home Depot. It's not too bad, and it's cheap. The desks turned out nicely. But if we wanted plywood of a little better quality, what should we look for?

[WoodworkerTom]

18mm Baltic Birch would be a good plywood to use

[overland]

How would it be better than maple plywood? Isn't it constructed the same way?

[Bill Wilson]

The key is the number of layers of ply in the sheet. The more layers, the better. It will be more stable. Baltic Birch ply tends to have more layers than other ply products of the same thickness. If you can find maple veneered ply in the same thickness, with the same # of layers or more, then it comes down to cost & availability and appearance. BB ply is pretty bland looking and takes more effort to finish out as smooth as other hardwood veneered ply, but it will likely be significantly cheaper.

[WoodworkerTom]

Maple plywood cores usually are made of laminated fir veneers. Sometimes it could be poplar or aspen and other softer woods.

Baltic birch should be 100% birch plys and more of them for greater strength and stability and they normally use an exterior grade adhesive.

[Cooler]

WoodworkerTom said:

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18mm Baltic Birch would be a good plywood to use

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I agree.

The tables used in the previous iteration of Starbucks was made from Baltic Birch. The finish was just OK, but the table tops were first rate.

Here is more information that anyone really needs to know about Baltic Birch:

http://www.woodworkerssource.com/blog/ti...when-to-use-it/

[Cian]

Baltic Birch ftw!

[Scoony]

Look for Apple Ply

The American take on Baltic Birch.
Not made of apple, but they gave it that name as a play on apple pie.

I have seen two types of Maple ply in Home Depot, one with fir core and one with poplar core. I much perfer the poplar core. They also carry birch ply, but the maple ply seems to be of higher quality.

The stuff at Lowes seems to have a much lower quality core.

I avoid anything with the "made in china" stamp on the edges.

There is a large distributor about an hour away from me (Louisville) that carries a wide range of plywoods with different cores. If I need something special, I will go there.

[Cooler]

You can do joints on baltic birch that you could not do on hardwood ply.

Dovetails come to mind immediately. And box joints:

http://www.thewoodworksinc.com/cabinet-d...ed_001.jpg

[overland]

I presume that the birch plywood at places like Home Depot is not the Baltic birch referred to here. Am I right?