Hacker News Reader

Comment by leoedin | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone worked with bamboo plywood? How does it compare to other plywoods?

It doesn't appear (at least on the website linked) to be particularly cheap - a full sheet of 20mm bamboo plywood is almost €300! You could probably buy 3-5 sheets of 18mm baltic birch for that price - hardly the cheap material they're claiming.

I bought a cheap chair made of bamboo once and it was very soft - it didn't give me the impression it would hold up very long. Perhaps some of the processing steps for plywood improve that?

View on HN

I've never worked with bamboo plywood, but the product on the website looks like it should be compared with 20mm 3 ply wood panels made from cut hard wood instead of the cheap ply wood made from peeled wood.

So a better comparison would be something like [1], which is a lot more expensive than standard birch plywood.

[1]: https://www.arbeitsplatten-shop.de/epages/61566463.sf/de_DE/...

Baltic birch isn’t cheap plywood - it’s good stuff.

I'm not saying it's bad, I've used birch plywood myself and I like it.

But you can't compare the 13 layer plywood made from peeled wood with the stuff made from 3 layers of sawed wood. They are completely different types of product, and the cost is also very different.

Apart from mechanical properties, the 3 layer stuff is also much nicer optically usually (eg. they use camera sorted boards to achieve nice and even patterns). That's why it is more expensive.

Birch plywood and baltic birch plywood are completely different animals.

Regular birch plywood is indeed often the cheap stuff.

Baltic birch will be void-free and of a very consistent quality and made from thinner veneers. It's much more stable and high quality product, although you're correct that it probably won't be as pretty on the surfaces.

Too be honest I've never heard of "baltic birch" before so I can't comment on how different it is from the normal birch plywood we get here in EU.

I just googled it and saw that it looks exactly like the birch plywood I have been using, so I assumed that it has similar properties.

I consider birch to be "good" plywood, it's very easy to work with, strong, and seems somewhat resilient to warping. However, because the layers are so thin you often end up breaking bits off when working on it with a router, and the surface somehow doesn't get as smooth when sanding.

The 3-layer boards (not sure what they are called in English) seem to be easier to sand smooth, easier to finish with oil, and are not as finicky when routing.

Just from looking at pictures, I'd assume the bamboo boards are closer to the 3 layer stuff rather than the 13 layer stuff.

Yeah I noticed the ads(?) at the bottom with the price. ~150 Euros for a square meter? Damn. It's probably cheaper in China/Asia, but not here lol

God, I remember working at one job where I saw a couple stacks of metal come in on a nice sheet of 4x8 woven-bamboo instead of a crappy wood pallet or plywood, I'm now kicking myself for not grabbing them when I had the chance.

Story time! My uncle had some contact in fruit shipping, and noticed that this guy got pallets of mangoes (i think it was) with bottom plate boards that were 3/4th inch mahogany plywood. They'd been burning them as scrap.

He salvaged enough to roof his houses in barns near the Florida coast and never worried about hurricanes. I have a couple chunks of it that have outlived the steel frame of the flatbed cargo trailer they're floor for.

Ah good save, I did see a rough cut 2x4 of tiger maple once, plus a couple sheets of appearance-grade 4x8 red oak... and thankfully I was smart enough to grab those.

Personally I'd use the mahogany ply for something furniture-related if it didn't have ugly knots or cracks in it. It was a rather nice looking wood the few times I've seen it, so it seems a shame to use it for something purely structural.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com