cutaway

It just occurred to me that the curbsides are full of free light weight mahogany (occasionally oak) plywood in the form of the bottoms in drawers of discarded cheap dressers. Thinking about it, I also realize I've seen this same stuff in the dumpsters outside places like Home Depot where it was used as a packing material to banded to the side of pallets of sheet goods to keep the stuff from sliding around during shipment.

green river rc

My Feedback: (2)

It's a good idea but I think you will find it's not really the same stuff. You are probably thinking of luan plywood which is between 3/16" and 1/4". I doubt you will ever see 1/8" plywood for drawer bottoms, and least I hope not. Besides, the REALLY cheep dressers will have cardboard type material anyway.

I get what you are saying though, I love to find uses for free things for my RC hobby. The nearest HS is 65 miles away, and you can't always count on Tower for a fast shipment. Besides that, it's fun to come up with ideas and they actually work. Give it a try and tell us how it goes.

robear1053

Not free but definitely inexpensive... the damaged hollow core doors sold at large hardware stores like Minards often can be scrapped for the plywood facing. It is even better when you get one that is being sold very cheap because it was not well glued... usually the ply on those is already falling off. One 36" wide 7' tall door supplies a lot of inexpensive 3 ply wood.
Bob Furr

Black Arrow

The boxes that some fruit (like those small tangerines from Spain called Clementines) is shipped in have plywood sides that sure looks and feels the same as light ply. I think light ply is made from poplar wood.

Hossfly

I use a considerable amount of such plywoods especially for reinforcement of various errors.

The tendancy to split and break can be well reversed if one applies a light coat of THIN CA around the edges, especially those edges not glued to anything, like doublers, etc.

Then if you have thin, 1/16, 1/8, whatever, you can liminate the ply with any glue ( I use carpenter's glue, with a few spots of CA to hold it together) to get thick sections such as firewalls, etc. If you feel the need in big-heavy machines use a hard multi-ply of about 1/16 on each side. A total 3/8 will hold a .30 CC gas burner.

I have not bought plywood for years. Last time was a 4 X 8 sheet of cabinet top 1/8 3 ply at a home-store some 15 years ago. Still have some of that.