Ned Asplundh writes: “Whats the “best” ply to use for my next project, Birdwatcher?
Ned’s concern is pretty universal across the spectrum of builders who use ply as the primary construction material. As with so many building questions, there is no one “right” answer for all occasions. I use okume for all my building, except for summer camp programs where absolute low cost is a base-line requirement. I hate building with softwood plywoods, but I’ll do it to get to work with kids. I’ll relate what I know about okume, I hope others will provide info on the other woods. In my experience, checking in softwood plywood has to with the nature of the wood, not the supplier. All softwood plywood checks, some worse than others. As Ned has discovered, there is no way to stop the checking, the best that can be done is to refinish as necessary to fill the checks as they appear. There is a widely held idea that okume does not check. This is not true in my experience. When refinishing two of my older canoes built with okume, I noticed random patches of cracks in the paint. The cracks