Making Edge-Grain Patterned Plywood

so i make quite a bit of plywood furniture  in my shop and whenever i make a furniture   piece i have to think about whether  i want the exposed plywood edge or to   cover it up with edge banding and it got me  wondering if there's actually a third option   that's what i'm gonna be working on this  week to see if i can make a decorative edge   make it look like exposed plywood but a  little bit fancier so let's give it a shot   those of you familiar with the channel will  know that i make a whole bunch of patterned   plywood i take the edge grain of plywood and i  glue it up into various different patterns and   that's what i'm going to be starting with  today i'm i'm working on a chevron pattern   as my first test that involves just cutting a  whole bunch of strips out of baltic birch plywood the chevron pattern is going to be on a 45 degree  angle and so i like to push all of my strips onto   that 45 angle strike a line with a speed square  and that way i just have an indication this isn't   doesn't have to be super precise it just saves on  material those ends are going to get cut off and   you might as well maximize the  amount of yield out of this blank so i'm gluing up the face side of the plywood  because i want the edge grain to be exposed so   i've tipped all of them forward i'm going to lay  out all of my glue with a roller and then tip   them back onto themselves being mindful of that  45 degree angle again then i'll clamp them up well i have to say i was a little worried about  the amount of squeeze out on this blank i really   didn't get a lot i like to see a little bit more  because i'm going to be cutting this into tiny   pieces i probably should have put more glue on but  we'll see how it goes when i cut it into strips   the first cut i'm gonna make on this blank is with  my track saw and that same speed square again if   it's not perfectly 45 degrees it doesn't really  matter uh the the pattern will still match up you   can actually go at any angle that you want i've  seen people do them at 60 degrees and they look   really cool too this is just what i chose and then  i can start passing the blank through the table   saw i'm cutting a half an inch wide and so far  they're holding together which is which is good with all my strips cut i can  lay them out on my clamps and   i just flip over every other strip  and that forms the chevron pattern   if you want these to match up really well  just make sure that the ends are aligned so   those kind of pointy bits at either end if  they line up the pattern will line up great when i was going to do the glue up i realized  that i didn't have quite enough room inside my   clamps i thought for a second about setting them  to the side but i fortunately have a set of four   foot long shore foot clamps i get questions about  these clamps a lot because i use them a ton in my   shop i've had them for a number of years they're  made by rockler and they are they're great i i   had the harbor freight ones before and those were  a good uh temporary solution but they started to   bend and warp these ones have held up awesome i'll  post a link down below to where you can find them i had much better squeeze out on this go-round  that's about what i want is just a little bit   above and a little bit below um so i feel pretty  confident i have noticed that when you glue up   that the second glue up it absorbs a lot more  glue so a lot of times i'll do i'll do two coats i squared off one edge and then ripped a strip  i'm not gonna rip the whole blank apart at this   point because i really don't know how this  is gonna go this is all just an experiment   so uh this is the first one and  it looks pretty good it's about an   inch tall and half an inch wide a little bit  a little bit wider than the plywood that i   want to line i'm basically going to resaw  this from here so i'm using my bandsaw fence   set at 3 16 of an inch and i'm going to see how  it goes see if they fall apart or hold together well i know that may look like a little bit of a  fail but it's actually pretty good that's better   results than i was expecting i was worried that  i didn't have enough glue in that initial glue up   and there's definitely some that are  breaking but most of them are holding   these are actually pretty fixable i can use just  some ca glue and glue them back together but i'd   say i'm really happy this is uh this is really  good i did notice a bit of chatter right here   i might make these a little wider so that when  i sand them down i can get rid of that chatter   but yeah this is looking pretty good i'm going to  experiment with making them a bit thinner see what   happens these are at 3 16 and i'm going to try and  do them at an eighth inch they may just fall apart   but it's worth experimenting well while i've got  the blank to work with i ripped the second strip   a little bit wider than the first one and then  i i made it a little bit thinner so it should   if i have got that chattered edge i should have  room to sand it out and this way i can i can see   how thin i can go i don't think i want to go much  thinner than an eighth inch because i don't think   it's going to glue up very well but an eighth  inch would be perfect if i could pull it off oh oops all right well these work well i completely  messed up that first strip so i cut another   one and i wanted to get a full test to see how  many strips i could get out of a single blank well that's pretty fantastic right there that is  uh six pieces out of this one piece right here   this is an inch inch thick so that's great i  even think that uh i can get rid of some of   this chatter on the edge by working on my  zero clearance on the bandsaw but there's   just so much potential here i'm gonna test it  out on a piece of plywood but i also realized   that if you flip it back and forth you  can get the diamond pattern which is   like that this would look really cool as edge  banding in and of itself you could just use the   diamond pattern like that but  oh man there's so much potential meanwhile i decided to test out some zero  clearance options i think what's causing the   fuzzy edge is the fact that my zero clearance  insert my band bandsaw is pretty used up and   i'm trying this hack that has worked for  me in the past where i put a thick piece of   tape right up against the blade and it's sort  of like an improvised zero clearance insert unfortunately this didn't seem to  do much at all there were still   some pretty noticeable fuzzy edges so on to plan b i found a piece of plexiglass lying  around in a scrap bucket and i thought   this might work a little bit better i think that's about as good as i'm  gonna do i i can't seem to get the   fuzzy little bits to go away completely  but they're a little better with the with   the plexiglass so i'm gonna run with  that and just batch a whole bunch out so well i am thrilled with how that looks i was  a little worried that the eighth inch would be   super thin and would get wobbly uh  wouldn't clamp up nearly as well but   i haven't seen any of that there's no voids along  this this edge and um yeah it just looks great so   this gets me excited i've got a couple other  ideas of things that i can do the main one   is to do the the diamond pattern on the  edge as opposed to just the chevron and   i think that's gonna look really cool one  thing i'm gonna do is bump it up to three   quarters of an inch so that you can see  more of that pattern so let's try that i still have that piece that i messed up earlier  and it turns out that that is the perfect width to   to make uh two strips that equal  three quarters of an inch so   i just went ahead and ripped  that piece down to size since i'm going to have to face these pieces  into each other i wanted to make sure that   they were very flat and that they didn't have any  fuzzies so so i sanded them up on my sanding board they are very fragile so i  have to be pretty careful it i had enough to wrap around this  piece of plywood if i cut all of   them in half so i measured them  out and cut them with a chisel so and i mean it just looks awesome it looks so  good i'm i'm uh very pleasantly surprised by this   and i can just think of a million projects  that i can use this on in the future   one thing that i know that people are going to ask  about is this is this exposed edge you've got the   the plywood edge here and i think  i've got a solution for that too   veneer so i'm going to try veneering a panel  i've seen people do this before i think john   peters has done this on his channel where he'll  apply the edge banding and then veneer over the   top of the edge banding it's a really smart way to  get a seamless look so i'm going to give it a go i'm going to be using contact cement  to attach the veneer to the wood   it works really well you basically just  spread it on wait for it to dry and then   stick the two pieces together it is incredibly  toxic though so make sure you wear a respirator once the contact adhesive has had about 15 to  20 minutes to dry it's good to go and and then   i can apply the veneer gonna be really careful  with this the instant it's stuck it's stuck   permanently so i just kind of roll it out and then  use a scrap piece of plywood to burnish the edge i've rounded over the front edge of the plywood so   it doesn't scrape into it but it  does apply quite a bit of force well the veneering works great  and it's hard to be more pleased   about that um yeah this has got so much potential  i'm actually i've actually already started a piece   of furniture made with this stuff because i was  so excited about it so that will be next week's   video make sure you're subscribed big thank you to  patreon patreon supporters you guys are the best   i really appreciate it if you want to join the  patreon there's a link over here and if you want   to see more pattern plywood videos i've got a full  playlist over here i'll catch you on the next one you

Channel: Michael Alm

Views: 2,190,751

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Id: _U4UMj07whs

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021