Looking for material advice

[evansd2]

@cynd11

You can get an idea of the location of voids and plugs by shining a really bright light through the plywood and noting the shadows within.

Previously, illustrated:

Trick for inspecting plywood

The short version: use a really bright flashlight to shine through the plywood, and you can see inclusions and voids pretty easily, like x-ray vision. Longer: So, I’ve had a few cuts fail where inconsistency is in baltic birch plywood that I got at the local art store caused the pieces to not be fully cut. Upon inspection, it seems pretty obvious that there was a knot in the central sandwiched layer. So I took a bright flashlight and looked through my 1/8 inch plywood, and found some surprisi…