Wood Talk | Woodworking · The Wood Whisperer

558 – Plywood…Suck it Flat

·59 min·5 clips

Shannon reveals why the North American market can't get high-quality plywood—manufacturers won't make it because we won't pay.

Show 558 puts plywood on the bench. After the Rockler note and some Patreon ribbing, Mark, Shannon, and Matt settle into the kind of shop talk where the jokes keep bumping into the useful answer. Plywood does not get much sympathy. The question is whether sheet goods need to be flat, consistently thick, or both, and the answer changes with the work in front of you. CNC work gets its own wrinkle. If the machine can pull a panel down, consistent thickness may matter more than whether the sheet behaves on its own. That is where suck it flat takes over. The phrase turns into a running bit, but the advice underneath is real enough for anyone wrestling big cabinet parts. Storage is not treated like a magic cure. The better bet is to assume plywood will fight you, then design and assemble as if that was always part of the job. Face frames get a little grace because they can make the visible cabinet read square even when the inside has some bow. Big bookcase sides do not forgive as easily. When both sides need to stay parallel, bowed plywood can turn assembly into clamp-heavy muttering. So the answer shifts to workflow. Know where precision matters, hide what can stay hidden, and stop asking sheet goods to act like milled lumber. By the end, the crew sounds half resigned and half amused. If re-gluing laminations starts to seem like a good idea, they treat that as the warning light. Solid wood is the escape hatch for builds that need more perfection than warped sheets want to give. Then it drifts out with the usual loose banter and one last signoff joke.

As heard by us

Plywood is easier to live with when the build is set up around its flaws.

Wood Talk treats plywood as something to work around, not something to expect perfection from. The episode is strongest when it moves from panel flatness to consistency, CNC zeroing, face frames, and the small habits that keep sheet-good builds lining up.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Need plywood advice that treats flatness like a shop problem, not a slogan?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Wood Talk | Woodworking