Plywood edge curve

I think you will be OK. It would be even better if you used a higher quality plywood with more layers.

I have built birch plywood cabinets and didn't want the end grain to show, so I made 3/4 X 3/4" strips of solid soft maple (has a similar grain and color of birch), then covered the plywood end grain with these strips. I used biscuits and glue to attach them and then a flush trim router bit to trim them even with the plywood surface. Doing this not only covered the plywood end grain, but also strengthened the plywood edges and helped prevent the plywood from warping, kind of like a breadboard edge on a table, so it might be worth doing. Cross grain gluing isn't a problem when doing this, because of the stability of plywood. I have never had one of these joints fail.

The A Grado B means that one side is A grade and the opposite side is B grade. A grade is a smooth unblemished surface. B grade can have minor blemishes, but the surface is smooth. Sometimes they patch knots and blemishes to make the surface smooth. This is acceptable for a grade B surface, but not for a grade A surface.

If you bought this plywood from a big box store, the surface veneers are likely paper thin, so do as little sanding as possible or you might sand through the surface veneer. The higher the quality of the plywood, the more internal layers it will have and the flatter and more stable it will be. The plywood called "Baltic Birch" will have many thin layers and no internal voids in any of the layers, so it is more stable than plywood with fewer layers and internal voids, but true Baltic Birch plywood is metric dimensioned and about a 60" X 60" sheet size.

Charley

Duane Bledsoe said:

I looked it up on the HD website and it’s called Sande plywood (not sanded but Sande).

I thought I was buying Purebond when I got it. Guess not. Oh well, it’s a mobile workbench, not an heirloom. Just has to work, and if it gets skinned up (cause this surface takes dents and scratches easily) then it will just look more the part.

I’m making a (takes a deep breath and sounds like Ralphie in The Christmas Story) mobile workbench/table saw infeed-outfeed/router table/jobsite sawhorse/sanding platform/miter saw station/small projects assembly and finishing station........phew!

I’ll post pics when it’s done. Right now I’m drawing designs.

Click to expand...

Duane...
SEAL IT WELL BEFORE YOU INSTALL IT...
cover the top w/ tempered hardboard...
use really large HEAVY DUTY castors...
found this...
there's pages of links all saying the same...
Sandeplywood. Anyone know anything about it?

Sandeply Problems - Carpentry - Contractor Talk

saw this post..
It's like the pot luck of plywood...usually made of some crappy wood from Malaysia or China and if you're lucky the veneer won't bubble after painting it. It has a nice clear appearance and the price is tempting for those bargain hunting, but I would never recommend it for anything other than "fun" experimental projects. I've used it to rip for shelving.
another post..
Interior glue dissolves in water. Might be ok on the first outing if you seal it with epoxy. I wouldn't trust it on the second trip though.

now that I've read more... I did use ones... no.. make that twice... 1st and last time...
dampness does make it come apart...
and it'll sag under it's own weight in the horizontal...

If you are worried about the soft surface, a piece of 1/4" Masonite (tempered MDF) on the top will take all kinds of punishment, and if you attach it with flat head screws, it can be replaced if you should ever feel the need to. The tempered version of mdf is quite hard and will not break easily if backed by plywood. It's quite reasonably priced too.

Another option to consider is using an industrial solid core door for a workbench top. They are HEAVY, but hold up incredibly well when used as a workbench top. Some are solid wood with a veneer on both faces, while others are mdf in the middle with solid wood edges to hold the hinge screws and door knob and 1 3/4 to 2 1/2" thick. If you trim it to eliminate these areas and it has an MDF center, just screw and glue a hard wood strip to cover the bare MDF edge.

Some years ago in my former workshop I had a workbench with a top made from one of these doors (2" thick). I left it there because it was too heavy for me to get out of the basement shop, even with a good friend helping me, but I still miss having it 35 years later. That was a very solid workbench.

I recently saw a brand new commercial door for sale at my local Habitat Store for $50. It would cost 3X that much or more to make a bench top as solid as that door from anything else. The legs of my old bench were just 2 X 4 construction lumber screwed and glued together. Nothing fancy, but solid as a rock.

My present shop is too small for a work bench like this or I would have come home with that door and made new bench from it. I still miss that old re-purposed door work bench.

Charley

While you look at the pics I'll explain. There are two mounts attached to the rails of the stand, one on each end, and they can be moved any distance apart or together. Currently they are in the farthest position apart. They also don't even have to be used. The plywood overhang I was going to ask about would be about 2 inches passed where the mounts stop, and theyre so close to the surface below where the extension latches are at that I cannot add any extra to thicken the edge. I can move the mounts closer together to make this problem go away but the tradeoff is a downsized surface from 36 inches to 30 inches to allow barely enough room on each end to get clamps in place between the new top and the metal frame. I could also simply make the work surface taller to fix it and not lose work space but then I give up using it as a infeed/outfeed table for my tablesaw. So based on this, the work surface space and table saw feed uses are more valuable to me than end clamping during any project.