Shiv Ply Wood

Hardwood is made from fine wood dust mixed with a binder and heat-pressed into panels. The sheets can be sold as-is, or a veneer skin, like oak or maple, can be laid up on the sheet. (the veneered sheet is the most common form, but blank mdf sheets are available as paint-grade)

consist of a core material, like laminated fir veneer, overlaid with a pressed fiber material. In short, this is a typical veneer core plywood (common plywood) with an MDF surface. This gives the best of both worlds; the weight is lower than a full MDF, but the surface is more stable than a veneer core plywood.

Veneer Core plywood is made from alternating layers of fir slices (common plywood) with a surface veneer of a finished woodgrain such as oak or maple. This construction gives VC plywood a distinct advantage over others in strength. This is a light weight material, and easy to handle.

Lumber Core Plywood is manufactured from strips of solid lumber, typically basswood. The core is then surfaced and a veneer layer is applied. This is one of the most expensive plywood types to make, and is commonly used for applications where the edges cannot be concealed or need to be routed.

PBC uses a coarser wood dust than MDF. Because of this, it has a slightly lower weight, but the edges and surfaces are not as smooth and consistent. Most melamine products use PBC as the substrate.

Melamine plywood is a thermally fused, resin saturated paper finish over a particle board core. It is highly stain and abrasion resistant. As a cabinet maker, I use a lot of this material. Even though glue manufactures claim to have developed an adhesive which bonds to the surface, I (personally) am not willing to take the chance; after all, this is a "paper" surface. (My personal recommendation to any one using this product is to dado the joints for better bonding.)

Appleply is a manufacturer's name for high density maple plywood. From a fabrication stand point, it is similar to Baltic Birch, in that it carries about the same number of plies, except Appleply comes in standard 4'x8' sheets. Because the surface is maple, there will be slightly more grain pattern on the surface, and the surface will sand much smoother. There is less splintering of the machined edges, and those splinters which do appear will be shorter and less inclined to align with the edge.