Plywood Question

The plywood should be fine and get a nice smooth edge. Your joiner might suffer. I wrecked a set of knives jointing plywood. The knives left neat ridges in a board where they had hit the glue in the ply.

-- Adversity doesn't build character...................it reveals it.

Mike
It depends on the type of joint your thinking of and the type of plywood you would use.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

I am looking to just use box store 3/4. I just need to clean up just two 4’ edges if I were to make the project

-- look Ma! I still got all eleven of my fingers! - http://www.termitecrafts.com

Many of the box stores carry plywood made in China and has been found to have such things as razor blades or other metal in it,it also has been know to de laminate . So no matter what type of joinery you use it may not make a good project.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

I’d use the table saw and call it a success…clean up the edge with sandpaper. I just don’t see an application that would require a clean, jointed edge on regular plywood (baltic birch is a different story), at least not at risk of wrecking your jointer blades. If you don’t care much about your jointer plane, then you could use it.

-- jay, www.allaboutastro.com

Don’t use the jointer with the expensive knives. Use a router and straight edge with a flush trim bit. Much cheaper to replace a bit rather than the knives.

-- Sam Hamory - The project is never finished until its "finished"!

If I were convinced that plywood was the answer, the jointer would be in play. Just take the advice above and check the edge carefully first. And take light passes so you know what you’re biting into.

The wisdom above says go another route… Hard to ignore…

Hope you update us with whatever you decide. Good luck!

-- Don't anthropomorphize your handplanes. They hate it when you do that. -- OldTools Archive

Ok so I tried it anyway as sometimes you just need to see what happens. I was ripping the plywood into 2” strips and then face glueing the faces together for a special effect. Since I needed the edge clean and without saw marks I did 2 passes per board with the jointer and everything was fine. No damage to the blades that I could see after inspection. I also moved the fence several times so that I wasn’t using just one part of the knives.

I will post the project when it is done.

-- look Ma! I still got all eleven of my fingers! - http://www.termitecrafts.com

I’m not sure why, and didn’t even realize it until you asked the question, but I typically grab my dewalt hand planer when I joint plywood. Maybe I knew the above but didn’t know I knew it. I also tend to take very shallow cuts.

-- There is nothing like the sound of a well tuned hand plane. - http://timetestedtools.wordpress.com (timetestedtools at hotmail dot c0m)

I sometime find Columbia Forest ply at the big box..ask them if they have any.

It is much better quality.

-- “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it” ― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

The glue is heck on jointer blades. Especially the Chinese plywood. They REALLY like putting tons of glue to compensate for the crappy veneer. Glue fixes everything… :-(

-- Don, Diamond Lake Custom Woodworks - http://www.dlwoodworks.com - "If you make something idiot proof, all they do is make a better idiot"