Yo, Mike R. Brown, I strenuously disagree: On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Michael R. Brown <[email protected]>wrote:
> When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not > going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall > and nobody will ever see it. I think you have a "beer can shim" type prejudice shining through. I AM a carpenter, and plywood is exactly what I'd use. Plywood is simply wood that has been glued together so that the grain goes both ways. This provides great strength and stability, which is exactly what you need on the back of a chest of drawers because you sure can't use the sheer strength of the front opening part of the chest. Plywood can be made of oak or any other high-quality hardwood, and thus is stronger and lighter than solid wood. In fact, I made a countertop from a huge dead madrone in the back of my house, and used OSB (oriented strand board - that stuff that looks like big chips all glued together) to back up the laminate I'd made from the Madrone tree. My mentor taught me to do it this way, because solid wood tends to expand and contract with humidity and temperature changes and you need something solid for your backing. Believe me, the results have been quite stunning. Madrone isn't a common cabinet material but it should be. There are hues of blue and green amongst the red grain which stays beautiful through the years. But if anybody quizzes me closely, I assert that the backing is a specially formulated wood garnered from the private collection of Baron Von Krupp. In actuality, I got it for seven bucks a sheet at Home Depot. MRB: Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't > be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's > thinking. John: Precisely. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
