What is Plywood?

There are alot of people asking What is Plywood?

If you are interested in plywood, you probably want to know what plywood is? What is plywood manufacturing process? Why is plywood widely used in modern life. We I will share some useful information about plywood.

Plywood is a wooden sheet manufactured from thin layers of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another, under the impact of pressure and heat.

Plywood was invented in the 19th century by a man named Immnuel Nobel – the father of the famous scientist Alfred Nobel. He figured out that when linking natural thin wooden layers together will create an incredible durable sheet material.

The process to make a sheet of plywood as follows: From the thin wooden sheets which are sliced from the large wooden logs (also called veneers) and dried by sunlight or by a dryer machine until the target moisture content is reached. After that, they are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. This will create a stronger cohesion. After being putted under the impact of pressure and heat, the product will be solid and durable.

So, why do they need to rotate the wood grain up to 90 degrees to each others? The purpose is to increase the cohesion, while decreasing the separation between the layers when we nailed on the edges. Another benefit is to reduce the expansion, shrinkage, warping of the sheet of plywood, increase the durability and the stability of the plywood’s structure. That’s why, plywood is very different from natural wood, they are not prone to shrinkage, termite or chapped by different weather conditions.

Structural characteristics of plywood is thin and smooth surface and the inner core layers are much thicker than surface. Consequently, it will strengthen the cohesion of the surface layer, which is directly under the highest external impact. When there are external forces, the outer layer will absorb most of the impact, and the impact force to the core layer is almost zero. Besides, when a shear force acting on plywood sheets, the texture will make the outer layer hard to be torn so the sheet of plywood will be more aesthetic.

The thickness of the plywood is very various. It depends on the purpose of users. The thinnest sheet usually is 3mm, and the thickest plywood even reaches to 30 mm. The most common size of one sheet is 1.220mm x 2.440mm.

Plywood is widely used in the construction, such as: walls, ceilings, formwork panels, packing…etc..