Anybody work with the 1/8" maple plywood from Lowes?

Beyond the Manual
1

I saw this last night and got a couple of pieces.

Anybody use it already?

Any quirks?

thanks,

2

I picked up a 4’ x 8’ sheet a few weeks ago and cut it down. There were several gaps and knots in the plywood layers, which made for inconsistent cutting. As long as you are fine with cleaning scorch marks or possibly recutting a couple of pieces, then it’s fine.

2 Likes
3

with 1/8, you can often shine a very bright flashlight through and see where knots and voids are inside the plywood. then you can mark them so you don’t cut in those spots.

5 Likes
4

I used hardware store wood when I was just getting started and wasted a lot of wood. Laser jump start has some cheep press board. It looks nice but is not really wood. Johnson’s Plastic has very nice color wood. I have also gotten some nice wood from https://thewoodgallery.com/.

5

I seems that hardware store wood varies and sometimes uses glue that does respond well to lasers as well as knots and voids in the inner layer of the ply

6

Also is the unknown of what their suppliers are, and what type of glues they are using… a risk (besides consistency/higher scrap rate) is that some could release stuff you don’t want to inhale when lasered…

7

i definitely had some issue where the laser didn’t want to cut through some of the knots and fillers. Had a few final areas in the final stages where i had to delicately razor through these small areas that didn’t want to detach. Usually nothing big, just enough to be a headache.

8

fortunately I plan on using that wood for simple divider boxes in the junk drawer. so if I have to get the xacto out it won’t be a big deal. thanks for the observations!