Difference Between Wood & Plywood

Series Summary

One of the keys to creating a successful woodworking project is to have the right tools at your disposal. Sure, you could make a project with a hammer and a hacksaw, but you would have a very hard time achieving the precise cuts and fits that are possible with tools such as jointers, joiners and planers, not to mention the wide variety of specialty saws. Woodworking is a precision craft these days, and if you are going to successfully compete with the quality of work of other students or other artisans, you will need to know your way around a wood shop.

In this series of carpentry lesson videos, our expert wood craftsman will give you a tour of the tools in his show, along with a brief demonstration. You will learn what tools to use in what situations. What is a planer used for? What is a biscuit joiner used for? Should I use the table saw or the chop saw? Our expert gives you the answer to these and many more questions in this excellent series for future furniture makers and finish carpenters.

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Kevin and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to talk a little bit today about woodworking. When you're woodworking for your home or for a project that you're doing for your business, one of the main things you have to decide is whether the project you're going to do is made up of solid wood or plywood. Both have their advantages and you need to really think about what is that you're doing and figure out which one works best for you. With solid wood, you have to take into account the economics of it, the fact that it expands and contracts and just the general look you want to go for. The same thing with plywood, you have economics to consider and will it work for what you want to achieve. Typically solid wood is used in more traditional furniture pieces and plywood is used for more kitchen cabinetry and closets, things like that. Plywood has the wood running in alternate directions which cancels out the wood movement, which makes it ideal for a cabinetry situation where you have really big cabinets with doors and the wood isn't expanding and contracting, pinching off doors and things like that. Plywood is very ideal for kitchen cabinetry and things of that line. So that's what you want to use for your traditional cabinetry jobs. With solid wood, you have the expansion and contraction of the wood to deal with and so as you can see on the grain here, its one solid piece throughout and it expands and contracts along it's grain and so with the different seasons and air conditioning, heating, it will take on and let off moisture and get bigger and smaller throughout the year. So you have that to take into account. So, once you've got over your project and decided where and what you need to use solid and plywood for, the next step is to buy your lumber and bring it back to the shop and depending on which one you selected, there are different methods that you would use to get it to the size for the project that you have and that's what we're going to talk about next, is how to machine your wood properly."