Maple cabinet

birch ply is rather light in color.

-- Lew- Time traveler. Purveyor of the world's finest custom rolling pins!

Will these two stain well with a light stain?

I would use a sealer like Charles Neil’s Blotch Control.

—Gerry

-- Gerry -- "I don't plan to ever really grow up ... I'm just going to learn how to act in public!"

I just buy a maple veneer ply. Mead-Clark (my semi-local not-big-box lumber yard, but not the slightly further away high end cabinet place) stocks it in ¼, ½ and ¾ prefinished in some sizes.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke

Descout, I have used both maple ply and birch ply for maple cabinetry. They can be difficult to stain so I would recommend using blotch control.

A side note is that in one of the NYW episodes I remember Norm saying that the two were interchangeable since they were difficult, at best, to see any difference.

-- Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful- Joshua Marine

If you’re not going to stain them, then the birch veneer won’t turn that same golden color that the maple veneer will age to. And birch and maple look pretty different to me, but they are both light colored, and if you were consistent about which veneer you were using, or using it for a hidden area (ie: back of a cabinet), birch might pass.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke