SYP Plywood for the DIY Dummies

Tongue and groove plywood

The daughter of one of the Antisocial Network staffers will graduate from high school this year, and is considering college majors (she's already been accepted by Indiana's Ball State University). She wants to major in English so she can continue her hobby of writing fantasy. Well, we certainly know about English majors writing fantasy – people like self-described "personal trainer" and "skilled and experienced investigator" Ron Roberts, who clearly had no idea what he was talking about when he attempted to explain the "Characteristics of SYP Plywood."¹

We'd bet a few bucks that Ron had to google "SYP" to find out that it means "Southern Yellow Pine," That's not the case here at AN HQ, since we've all seen a few sheets of the stuff over the years. Roberts, however, had to look it up; which is probably why he fumbled a few details. Well, perhaps he just wasn't very good at the old copy-reword-paste trick so many eHowians have used. We assume that's where he came up with clumsy crap like

"Quick growth and the young nature of the wood are factors that increase cell size."

The "young nature of the wood"? WTF is that supposed to mean? Ron went on to inform us that "The most common varieties of SYP plywood are sold as large 4-by-8-foot sheets that vary in thickness from 1/10-inch through 1/6-inch"... ... to which our house carpenters scratched their heads and said, "What? Well, maybe he's talking about individual plies, because a sheet of plywood 1/10th of an inch thick would be worthless, though it might roll nicely." More bushwa ensued, including "Tongue & groove SYP plywood flooring is typically one inch thick."

We aren't sure where he got that bull, since no one would use SYP (especially treated plywood) for flooring – though T & G plywood is used for subflooring, it's typically ¾" thick; not an inch. Roberts finished with the nonsensical claim that

"The weight of SYP... makes [it] preferred in applications where temperature will not impact the wood"... 

...which, frankly, makes no sense at all. But, then, just about nothing Roberts reworded from an assortment of websites where people could look at piece of lumber and identify plywood – something we doubt Ron could do – made much sense. That, we suspect, says a lot about the "investigative" skills of our Dumbass of the Day. Besides, he didn't actually say much about the stuff's characteristics, now, did he...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/info_8778933_characteristics-syp-plywood.html

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