FunkyspaceCowboy

I don't use plywood because I don't like working with it. With the exception of a mini-lathe and drill press my shop is entirely hand powered and plywood just doesn't work terribly well with hand tools. The glue is really hard on saw blades, plane irons and chisels and I don't think most traditional joinery would work well with plywood. I don't even want to think about what a disaster it would be to try to smooth plane the face of a plywood panel...

For those reasons I doubt an 18th century cabinet shop would bother with ply even if it were available.

I do admit I've been tempted on a couple of projects to just buy a sheet or two of hardwood ply to use for a case back to save time and/or money on a project. At my local hardwood dealer 1/2" furniture grade walnut and cherry ply is pretty much the same price by the sqft as 4/4 solid wood from the racks. If I was buying my hardwood at local retail prices that would be fine for the time savings. However I tend to just accumulate wood independent of any specific project and have scored some great deals on ebay, craigslist and the Woodnet forums over the years for far below local retail prices. It's just cheaper to dig around in my stash than go out and get ply.

Plus when I need to haul lumber myself I can fit about 30 bdft of 8' hardwood boards in my VW Golf (with the hatch closed!) but can't accommodate as single full sized sheet of ply.

Cheers,

Josh

I'd like to see more articles on 17th and 18th century furniture from America and Europe showing how they were built back then. I think there have been enough articles over the years explaining how to use power tool jigs to recreate period details, I'm more interested in how to use period tools to create period details.

I would also be very interested to see more articles on traditional wood furniture from Asia and information on the woods and tools used in their making and how to acquire in the West.

Cheers,

Josh