Hi all --
I discovered, quite by accident, that OSB and related high density manufactured
wood sheets are VERY stiff. I tried to use 3/4 plywood to bend the OSB and
it went the other way – 7/16” OSB bent the 3/4” plywood. Now what I got isn’t
true OSB (Oriented Strand Board), but a close cousin in that it uses chip wood
and a lot of glue under high compression, so that it crushes the wood fiber.
The sheets were what the builder of our development was using for shear panels
and roof sheeting, and what was not perfect they were throwing away. Being
the ever thrifty collector of such things, I got about 6 sheets worth of the
stuff, from almost full, nearly perfect sheets to odd sizes that were about a
third of a sheet. Considering that the plywood I had gotten at the local home
improvement store would not lie flat (though that was helpful in a couple of
places) I figured that free was worth the try. You might look into this kind
of product for those things you want FLAT and to stay that way. The 7/16”
version is stiff enough that it can support my heft with nary a bend on two
foot center supports
Have fun!
Bill Winans
Bill Lane et al --
Yes, there is 5/8" plywood. But unless you want to support it every 12 inches
or so, get 3/4" plywood. The 5/8" will sag between supports, but 3/4" will not
unless your supports are farther apart than 17 inches or so.
Why is this so? It's because of the difference in stiffness, which in the case
of flat sheets is proportional to the cube of the thickness (not the fourth
power, as for round rod). Thus, 3/4" plywood is about 70 percent stiffer than
5/8".
Dick Karnes
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