Plywood Grades for Dummies

Plywood grade stamp

Many long decades ago a friend of our founder taught him the aphorism "Chutzpah is not hubris." He still doesn't know what it means... but he does know that way too many of the "contributors" at the old eHow.com site exhibited substantial hubris; or maybe they were just too greedy to care about accuracy. Take, for instance, self-described "professional journalist" Chad Buleen, who was clearly way out of his comfort zone when he submitted "How to Identify Plywood."

Let's face it: the question is pretty much stupid, ambiguous, or both. Does the OQ literally want to know whether a substance is plywood or something else? or does s/he want to know what grade of plywood? or what? Buleen, in his infinite wisdom, decided to explain plywood grading, beginning by telling his readers that...

"Plywood is a versatile type of wood commonly used in construction. The type of plywood that a builder chooses varies, depending on his preferences and the specifications of the structure"... ...which pretty much leaves out any question of differentiating plywood from conventional lumber, hardboard, MDF, OSB, or LVL or any of several other manufactured products. But that's probably OK: you'd have to be pretty much unconscious not to realize that plywood's made of several layers of veneer... That being said, Chad launches into what is little more than a retelling of the official grading standards for plywood, including such -- dare we say it? -- moronic instructions as

"Study the complete lack of repairs in D-grade plywood."

Yep. he said that... But he never said word one about plywood with different grades on the two faces; skipped interior vs. exterior grade; and passed on mentioning treated, aircraft-grade, or marine-grade plywood -- pretty much a half-assed job, if you ask us.

Buleen's biggest research sin, however, was that he didn't point out that every sheet of plywood is stamped somewhere with its grade level: you don't have to "Look for," Recognize," or "Study" the faces: all you do is look for that stamp and read it. And here you were wondering why Chad was picking up his third Dumbass of the Day award: now you know...

Confidential to Leaf Group: we especially liked the image of the pretty young woman displaying a chunk of "plywood" that you plastered on Chad's post... except that's not plywood, it's OSB.

copyright © 2017-2021 scmrak

DD - LUMBER