Plywood is a manufactured wood panel made from thin sheets of wood veneer. It is one of the most widely used wood products. It is flexible, inexpensive, workable, re-usable, and can usually be locally manufactured. Plywood is used instead of plain wood because of its resistance to cracking, shrinkage, splitting, and twisting/warping, and its general high degree of strength.
Plywood layers (called veneers) are glued together with adjacent plies having their wood grain at right angles to each other to form a composite material. Cross-graining has several important benefits: it reduces the tendency of wood to split when nailed at the edges, it reduces expansion and shrinkage equating to improved dimensional stability, and it makes the strength of the panel consistent across both directions. There are usually an odd number of plies so that the sheet is balanced—this reduces warping. Because of the way plywood is bonded (with grains running against one another and with an odd number of composite parts) it is very hard to bend it perpendicular to the grain direction.
Types
Different varieties of plywood exist for different applications:
Softwood plywood
Softwood panel is usually made either of cedar, Douglas fir or spruce, pine, and fir (collectively known as spruce-pine-fir or SPF) or redwood and is typically used for construction and industrial purposes.
The most common dimension is 1.2525 m × 2.4 m or the slightly larger imperial dimension of 4 feet × 8 feet. Plies vary in thickness from 1.4 mm to 4.3 mm. The amount of plies depends on the thickness and grade of the sheet but at least 3. Roofing can use the thinner 5/8" (15 mm) plywood. Subfloors are at least 3/4" (18 mm) thick, the thickness depending on the distance between floor joists. Plywood for flooring applications is often tongue and groove; This prevents one board from moving up or down relative to its neighbor, so providing a solid feeling floor when the joints do not lie over joists. T&G plywood is usually found in the 1/2" to 1" (12–25 mm) range
Hardwood plywood
Used for demanding end uses. Birch plywood is characterized by its excellent strength, stiffness and resistance to creep. It has a high planar shear strength and impact resistance, which make it especially suitable for heavy-duty floor and wall structures. Oriented plywood construction has a high wheel-carrying capacity. Birch plywood has excellent surface hardness, and damage- and wear-resistance.
Birch plywood
Tropical plywood
Tropical plywood is always made of mixed species of tropical wood in the Asian region. Tropical plywood is superior to softwood plywood due to its density, strength, evenness of layers, and high quality. It is usually sold at a premium in many markets if manufactured with high standards. Tropical plywood is widely used in the UK, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Dubai, and other countries worldwide. It is the most preferred choice for construction purposes in many regions.
Special-purpose plywood
Certain plywood do not have alternating plies. These are designed for specific purposes.
Aircraft plywood
High-strength plywood, known as aircraft plywood, is made from mahogany and/or birch, and uses adhesives with increased resistance to heat and humidity. It was used for several World War II fighter aircraft. Although the British-built Mosquito bomber, nicknamed "The Wooden Wonder", was constructed of a plywood monologue, this was formed in moulds from individual veneers of birch, balsa and birch, rather than machined from pre-laminated plywood sheets.
Structural aircraft-grade plywood is more commonly manufactured from African mahogany or American birch veneers that are bonded together in a hot press over hardwood cores of basswood or poplar. Basswood is another type of aviation-grade plywood that is lighter and more flexible than mahogany and birch plywood but has slightly less structural strength. All aviation-grade plywood is manufactured to specifications outlined in MIL-P-607, which calls for shear testing after immersion in boiling water for three hours to verify the adhesive qualities between the plies and meets specifications.
Decorative plywood (overlaid plywood)
Usually faced with hardwood, including ash, oak, red oak, birch, maple, mahogany, Philippine mahogany (often called lauan), rose wood, teak and a large number of other hardwoods. However, Formica, metal and resin-impregnated paper or fabric bonded are also added on top of plywood at both side as a kind of ready for use in the decoration field.
Flexible plywood
Flexible plywood is very flexible and is designed for making curved parts. In the UK this is sometimes known as "Hatters Ply" as it was used to make stovepipe hats in Victorian times It is also often referred to as "Bendy Ply" due to its flexibility. However these may not be termed plywood in some countries because the basic description of plywood is layers of veneered wood laid on top of each other with the grain of each layer perpendicular to the grain of the next. In the U.S., the terms "Bender Board" and "Wiggle Board" are commonly used.
Marine plywood
Marine plywood is manufactured from durable face and core veneers, with few defects so it performs longer in humid and wet conditions and resists delaminating and fungal attack. Its construction is such that it can be used in environments where it is exposed to moisture for long periods. Each wood veneer will be from durable tropical hardwoods, have negligible core gap, limiting the chance of trapping water in the plywood and hence providing a solid and stable glue bond. It uses an exterior Water and Boil Proof (WBP) glue similar to most exterior plywood.
Marine plywood can be graded as being compliant with BS 1088, which is a British Standard for marine plywood. There are few international standards for grading marine plywood and most of the standards are voluntary. Some marine plywood has a Lloyd's of London stamp that certifies it to be BS 1088 compliant. Some plywood is also labeled based on the wood used to manufacture it. Examples of this are Okoume or Meranti
Other plywood's
Other types of plywood's include fire-retardant, moisture-resistant, sign-grade and pressure-treated. However, the plywood may be treated with various chemicals to improve the plywood's fireproofing. Each of these products is designed to fill a need in industry.
Sizes
The most commonly used thickness range is from 0.14 to 3.0 in (0.36 to 7.6 cm). The sizes of the most commonly used plywood sheets are 4 by 8 ft (1.2 by 2.4 m) or 3 by 6 ft (0.91 by 1.8 m). Width and length may vary in 1 ft (30 cm) increments.
In the United States, the most commonly used size is: 4 ft by 8 ft or 5 ft by 5 ft.
Sizes on specialized plywood for concrete forming range from 6 to 21 mm, and a multitude of formats exist, though 15x750x1500mm is very commonly used.
Grades
Grading rules differ according to the country of origin. Most popular standard is the British Standard (BS) and American Standard (ASTM). Joyce (1970), however, list some general indication of grading rules:
