9-ply birch is used for pinball machine playfields. That's how strong, flat, and smooth it is.

As a Scotsman living in Scotland, hearing oor Adam pronounce "shite" in the best possible way brings me much joy on this very wet and gloomy Tuesday morning.

Can't begin to explain how much watching this videos have help me to become a creator myself

Is called "Baltic" not "Arctic" everywhere I've seen on the East Coast.

The man loves his plywood.

Great sentences of our time "aid your laser cutter in catching on fire."

Its funny how me in Finland this situation is reversed and it makes me happy. I have almost never seen that kind of crappy plywood. For me plywood is this beautiful and strong material.

You can get high quality Baltic Birch Ply pre-cut from Rockler and it's really close to the same price as you'd get from the lumberyard. They sell it online too, so you can have it delivered. 👍

Usually called Baltic Birch in Canada and comes in 5' x 5' sheets

He was so excited about the question he got wood and showed us.

My favorite chapter in Every Tool’s A Hammer was the one about adhesives. Something about the way Adam talks about materials and tools makes it really fun to listen to.

BALTIC Birch, not ARCTIC Birch. This made me mildly nuts.

Poor Grogu sitting in the background wondering why he's so cold and why Old Man Luke Skywalker took his coat from him. :(

"I can break this stuff with my hands!"... I'm not convinced Adam.

Where I live, 1/2" good birch ply is like $45 for a 4x8 sheet. I'm about to butt up a bunch of old pallet wood planks to make tool storage shelves.

I love how excited he gets over things that others would find boring. He has so much passion and excitement for the world and it's always fun to watch!

Definitely get a track saw, I wish I had got one earlier. Been a life changer and makes dealing with sheets so much easier

I googled “Artic birch plywood” but I only saw results for “Baltic birch plywood”.

If you ask/look for "marine ply" it's a much better grade, better actual timber in terms of having far fewer voids or knots. Plus a stronger and water resistant glue. Whenever I build anything I want to last, I use marine ply.

There is no joy that compares to watching a maker geek out about the properties of their materials. Geek on Adam!

I just finished the inside of my new tiny house in 7-ply 1/2" birch ply. Lovely stuff. I'm now a fan.

Arctic birch ply. delivered to you door by our team of well trained polar bears

One of the good things about living in canada, that plywood is available the the big box stores for a reasonable price and they have a track saw, dollar a cut.

Whenever I'm building something for outdoors, I will frequently use cedar fence planks. They're dirt cheap and resist weather and rot really well. I've even been known to run planks thru my thickness planer to get rid of the rough-sawn exterior and make nice-looking lumber. The only thing you have to worry about is they're sold really really saturated with water so they have to be dried for several weeks to let them shrink to their final dimension before working with them.

find you someone who is as passionate about you as Adam is about plywood

Good video. It hit on some memories for me. I've built glow powered RC airplanes for many years and used plywood very sparingly, but If had to use plywood it was always aircraft birch plywood. My father worked in a cedar shake mill for 35 years and says he can't stand the smell of cedar, but I love it.

Absolutely fantastic material. Also called Baltic Birch. Maybe connecting with custom cabinet shop in the area. They’re likely to have a track saw until the shop is upgraded.

Baltic Birch is also made in 3/8" and 5/8" thicknesses (9mm and 15mm actual). Super useful for those cases where the next size down is a little too thin and the next size up is too thick. I like to keep a couple sheets of all the sizes in stock. B/BB is the most common grade and yes, the B side is very nice. Even the BB side is nice if you're okay with an occasional football plug.

I found a local cabinet shop and order a few sheet through them every so often and they cut it for me. Nice materials, in a wider variety of finishes than what's offered retail. It's Worth the effort to find.

I am a simple man. It's a true joy watching someone getting excited by wood.

After building my first few PA speaker cabinets many many years ago. I realized that compared to the amount of work I put into building the cabinets, the cost differential between cheap plywood and arctic birch was more than offset by the quality of the finished project.

I worked in a visual production shop for a few years and any time we got to work with Arctic birch, or “euro ply” as we called it, we were thrilled. It’s an awesome plywood to work with and much better than anything from the big box stores.

I know all the things he said in the video, but I still watched it from start to finish without feeling bored...

As an owner of a Festool Track Saw, you will not regret buying one, regardless of which brand you chose. Plus if you get a cordless one, you can cut a 4x8 sheet into more manageable sizes in the lumberyard parking lot.

Watching the first 3 seconds of this video made me so happy.

This explains a lot. I have never even seen "finished plywood", let alone what you use. To me, "plywood" has always meant barely usable crap wood.

Any time I go into a shop that sells lumber I always lust over the nice birch plywood. I don't even need to have a project that needs it at the time, it's just the best!

just built a bookcase with a friends HS freshman son and used A-B 3/4 ply 4'x8' for the body and 1/8 A-C for the back panel. the A side was sanded. I'm not a cabinet maker just a hobbyist but do love making things and helping my friend's son learn some things his shop teacher will have to un-learn him in a year or two if school ever goes back in session was fun.

I’m a residential framer we use OSB which is incredibly strong fastened correctly, I need to get my hands on some of that birch!

2 key points to add to selection of plywood: a) is the glue waterproof (& to a lesser extent, heat-resistant); b) how many ply layers are used in the makeup (even layers of same thickness are structurally better but more expensive ofc. The former indicates how weatherproof the ply may be (hence cheap 'shuttering ply' used for eg concrete/cement formers & general outdoor enclosures such as bird boxes, dog houses, temp hording of broken shop windows or construction sites etc); the latter indicates its internal strength & rigidity (as well as usually being of a nicer raw finish). NOT ALL MULTI-LAYER PLY USES WATERPROOF BONDING, so despite being nice to look at when first built, an outdoor structure may quickly delaminate over time due to weather effects if no attn is paid to its construction material's bonding details :(

Another thing worth mentioning about Arctic/Baltic birch sheet goods is that sometimes it’s good to pay attention to the glue seams between the layers… darker glue is usually outdoor grade (water resistant), light colored glue is not

You need to get yourself a track Saw! My favourite tool in the van as a carpenter, the fastest, safest, convenient and most accurate way of dealing with sheet goods. Your situation might be different as the primary work location is in your shop, but I can’t stress enough how convenient a cordless one is for dealing with large sheets for easy transportation from the timber yard. Not to mention all of the other daily uses I find for it. Also your comment about working with high grade ply being a dream to work with which I agree completely albeit the glue used frustratingly blunts blades prematurely...especially hand saws. Ash and oak are definitely the favourites for ease of working and agree cedar is nice to work with but for me is strictly used for decorative uses as it is too soft and splinters to be used in any practical frequently used items.

"i can break this with my hands" Proceeds to not break it with his hands. regardless, never change Adam! love from Australia~

I generally use 3/4" ACX, but I also don't do engineered types of things as Adam does. It has some voids, but generally minimally. I use them for tool holders and shop infrastructure, and it works great.

Plus one for beautiful birch ply, i built high quality loudspeaker enclosures and its the only stuff to use. The 19 and 24mm stuff i used was heavy and expensive but absolutely worth it in every way.

Baltic* birch ply?

For anyone in Canada looking for Baltic Birch plywood, check out Windsor Plywood. They also sell it different sizes: 4'x8', 5'x5', and some stores will have even smaller pieces - 2'x4'. It's definitely nice stuff to work with as far as plywood goes.

I use a lot of 5ply C/D it works well. I like 11 ply 3/4 A/B for finish project. And I will take and glue full sheet of C/D and A/B to gather for work tops. A Lot of Gorilla Glue and a couple pallets of seed corn to to press them together. I REALLY Love plywood

AC is a common Burch plywood, A-Grade on one side and C-Grade on the other. C can have filler used and showing. An X after the face grades represents an exterior rated glue; exterior doesn’t mean submerged in water that falls to Marine grade adhesive. Some home centers carry predominantly BC. Birch plywood is great in woodworking due to the number and consistency in plys; mist hone centers use veneer plywood’s even on their top plywoods. Know what you’re buying and what to expect. Hickory is a great solid wood that seems quite undervalued; I love it as it is Hard and Strong and holds up to the toughest locations and people.

The "baltic birch plywood" is the regular plywood we have (and produce) here in Finland. The fancier variety is meant outdoors and has heavy-duty waterproof surfacing on both sides, either dark shiny lacquer or anti-slip textured surface, either on both sides or both on opposiing sides. The cheaper variety of that is agricultural plywood, otherwise the same except durable waterproof paint rather than lacquer, it's what animal pens and such are built from on farms. The engineering quality is the same in all cases.

Cutting 4x8 sheets; get hold of a pair of Toughbuilt C700 sawhorses (you only need one, but a pair of anything is better). It has lugs on one side that you can support a sheet of 4x8 on while you run a skilsaw up to cut it.

Yep, found baltic birch at a local woodworking store and gave it a try. It’s definitely a superior product to the average stuff sold at Home Depot and Lowes. One thing not specifically noted is that it’s heavier, as well. That can be good or bad depending upon your situation. Mostly good, for me. It’s also a bit harder to cut due to the number of layers and density, which makes sense, of course.

This info is 100% spot on. I buy sheet after sheet of 1/4" at the local big-box lumber store in NE Wisconsin. Besides the laser it also cuts like butter in the CNC.

Adam's preferred wood: amzn.to/39PhXx0 Join this channel to support Tested and get access to perks, like asking Adam a question: kzfaq.info/love/iDJtJKMICpb9B1qf7qjEOAjoin Disclaimer: Tested may earn an affiliate commission when you buy through the links here.

Plywood: I would check out local woodworking stores (Rockler and Woodcraft are the two national chains) they sell Baltic Birch in 5x5 sheets And in terms of a Track saw: Festool or bust!

That good plywood looks like the kind used in the dieboard industry. It is very dimensionally stable. Lasers are used to cut the slots in the plywood board. Then hand-formed knives are pressed into the slots. Some cushy material is then placed in between to help eject the cardboard sheets after the dieboard assembly cuts the tabs, slots and flaps of what would become boxes and packaging.

Home Depot has a 3/4” plywood they call Radiata Pine that has a full thickness pine veneer for ~$31, but they keep it at the back of the store away from the pricier veneered sheet goods so it doesn’t compete with them. It’s 6 ply for 3/4” and has very few voids. It’s my “go to” for cabinet work.

I use that stuff (called Russian birch ply in my area) for guitar fixtures, jig, and templates. Even the shite stuff have uses. I used the cheap spruce stuff and OSB for making shipping crates for local artists. The regular HD stuff is usually overpriced but easy to find. Birch is $$$ and there is one store about 45 minutes from me that stocks it in the 30"x60". My shop is small so I drive there once a month. Once you use it, you never want to go back but the cost is high. It is a dream to work with.

One of the many reasons I love watching Adam, his large vocabulary. "Each layer is laid orthogonally....." pauses video to google said word..... =)

Here in Germany it is quite common and you get it in every hardware store (full sheet or cut to size). Even more common than the crappy stuff. Fun fact: it is called "multiplex boards" here - not baltic birch plywood.

Thanks Adam for the awesome content. Not sure if it is the same but you can get baltic birch at most Rockler and Woodcraft stores. Not sure if you have one near you but it may be a bit cheaper and they sell 30" X 48" panels in 1/4", 1/2" and 3/4" thick. You can also order it online at their websites. Hope this helps.

I use Baltic birch for making longboards, and have been for about 11 years now. Awesome stuff. I usually see it in 5'X5' sheets, but I can also find it pre-finished, which I can't use for making boards but is awesome for many other applications

Personally, i like that you can go on an 8 minute diatribe. I love your passion in all things maker, even down to plywood which i think most people barely give a second thought to

love the edit in the end. Nothing like poplar. One of my favorite houses I plumbed doesn't have a lick of drywall on the walls. All horizontal and vertical poplar shiplap.

I don't like living in Houston much, but one of the nice things is Clarks lumber, who stocks ALL SORTS of hardwood, and various thicknesses of all sorts of plywood, including baltic birch.

We call "Arctic Birch" by a different name here in BC...we call it "Baltic Birch", and it's great stuff, and readily available.

Houston (where I live) only has one supplier of 9-ply birch sheets. Thankfully they'll gladly cut it in house to whatever sizes you require, so I don't need a trailer to haul it.

Here in Brazil this kind of Plywood is known as "Naval Plywood" (Compensado Naval), and by the pictures, I guess it's the same thing. Here it's super easy to get, literaly every store Woodworker Store will have it, and they will cut at any size, even if you just buy like, half of it.

This reminds me of Stompin Tom Connors, a famous Canadian singer that became a favoured cultural touchstone in Canada. He played a kind of Honky-Tonk/Country/Folk style playing a guitar on a stool wearing a black Stetson hat. In his early career he travelled Canada coast to coast learning about people and places that didn't get much attention in popular media but were the backbone of the country and sang about them. When he preformed he would stomp his foot loudly to keep tempo but preformed in noisy places so he would damage the stages. Eventually he had to come up with a solution and he brought a square of plywood he would stomp on and eventually wear through, that he would refer to as "just a stage I am going through". The thing is he started going through allot of them (theus the Stompin in Stomping Tom Connors). Then in the 80's he was give a piecee of high quality high ply plywood. He joked about it be "Designer Plywood" like "Designer Jeans" but he realized that it lasted and sounded much better so kept getting more. One of those broken boards sold for well over $10.000 and supposedly one sold for charity for even more. So when ever I hear "High Quality Plywood" I always call it "Designer Plywood".

I get such a lovely vibe all the time from this content, making me want to make so many things. If I only had the time and effort to make 10% of the things I imagine. One day I'll finish a project

I'm so happy that I can get birch ply everywhere. Each hardware store with a wood section has this stuff in germany. Only the thin 3 and 4 mm stuff for lasercutting is not to get there.

I completely relate to his love of that plywood! It is nice to know I am not alone in having a favorite. I avoid veneer whenever can. It often rips and frays when being cut and bubbles upon contact with glue or paint. I can't stand it.

Interesting ... I'd say in Germany, multilayered plywood is much easier to get than veneered. You can also get it in almost every "Baumarkt" in a variety of thicknesses and freshly cut to the size you need.

No voids is also a feature of marine grade plywood but it still is only three to five ply's. I like clear pine for solid wood in cabinets for the shop.

You might want to contact Harbor Sales (in Sudlersville, MD)... They custom cut some beautiful birch, mahogany, and teak plywood. When I lived in the Baltimore area they were my go-to for plywood, and they delivered to my door! I called them to make sure they also ship, and they do ship pre-cut pieces (not full sheets). You might also try contacting some local cabinet-making shops to see if they can custom cut your project pieces.

In Switzerland we call it "Flugzeugsperrholz" Airplane-plywood out of birch and with 0.5mm layers, maybe you find spmething when you search aviation suppliers

Adam so loved his wood he gave his only time on earth to make a video on that single subject today.

In Canada we use a lot of Baltic Birch plywood. It's amazing

I made a pretty cool guitar stand out of birch plywood. The tall bit that supports the neck is like 3" wide, but I cut most of it out to put a gothic arch design in it, so it's actually only two long bits of 1/2"x1/2", still super sturdy. It's great stuff. Sadly I have not had much access to it since I left cabinetmaking school.

We use baltic birch for drawer boxes in custom cabinets. It comes in 5'x5' sheets

My dad is cabinet maker and he uses Baltic Birch plywood which is very similar, but comes in metric sheets, that are 1.5m. square which might be a more useful size if 4x8' is unwieldy

Just last night I was pondering about plywood (seriously). I'm going to make a ton of cabinets for my workshop and utility room that's a lot of sheets of ply and I was debating saving good chunk of money by skipping Baltic ply (the only ply I've used). I saw a lot of KZfaqrs use 'store' ply (which our UK stock is awful) but you've convinced me to stick with Baltic.

Thanks, this saved me the mistake of buying MDF, when I really needed plywood. cheers..

You can get the same exact plywood directly from woodcraft. They always charge much more when they sell through Amazon. I'm pretty sure they ship all over the USA.

Be aware, Ash, specifically “swamp” ash, is becoming rare, to the point that Fender, won’t use it for mass production anymore... limited runs and custom shop work might still use it, but they are moving to other tone woods for guitar and bass bodies. (Much like Rosewood, they are moving to other similar looking woods like Pau Ferro, or Laurel and reserving Rosewood for pricier models.)

This is what absolutely stresses me out when building stuff, all the time. Plywood is expensive and hard to get (Especially where i live) and once i make a mistake i can throw it away (in 80% of all cases). Getting a decent amount of it is a huge investment to me.

Sorry you don't live in the midwest Adam, we have hobbyist supply arctic birch at like, every Menards, with the nice thin plys, maybe 1-1.5mm each. I used it for making a 3d d&d wooden ship with 4 levels, including a hanging, unsupported forecastle platform and aftdeck, with little mini-stairs, for both the platforms themselves AND the runner for the whole keel out of some of the thicker maybe 1/2" ply. Man you're not wrong. that stuff laser cuts AND cuts on a scroll saw like an absolute DREAM.

My local yard has no issue cutting it for me, as long as I tell them not to worry about it. In my case it's not my shop so much as it is my transportation. I can't get 4x8 home to work it unless I need it so bad I'm willing to rent a vehicle. But as long as I say something like "just get it chopped down so I can get it home. I'm going to cut to size myself", they'll do it every time. Your results may vary, of course.

Baltic Birch plywood. Voids in plywood happen when there is a large knot in the veneer and the knot falls out during manufacturing. In voidless plywood they use a die to cut out those holes/knots and replace the void with another piece of veneer the same size and shape. The Baltic Birch that I use comes from Finland. It's used in die making and it's what I would consider a furniture grade plywood because of its strength. So easy to put a nice veneer on top of it to make something look expensive and because of the many thin plies it's more stable,, meaning it will change size less with changes in temp and humidity and warp less. It's still not as strong as a good solid hard wood tho. Pros and cons to everything.

You don’t need a panel saw! Get yourself a 4x8 sheet of rigid foam, then cut your panels on the ground using a track saw, or a circular saw with a guide of some sort. The foam just gives you a surface that allows you to cut just below the thickness of the ply and supports both sides of the cut piece.

Baltic/Russian/Arctic birch plywood is actually made differently than most of the garbage stuff we get here in the US. Most of it's made by submerging the plies in weather-resistant adhesive before slapping a sheet together, vs. just spraying crappy adhesive on sheets. That, plus the high layer count, makes Baltic/Russian/Arctic birch the plywood of choice for building great speaker cabs. You find it in 60"x60" sheets cause that's the common size they use for cabinet construction in Europe. If you find it in 4x8 sheets, you're probably not finding the right stuff.

I build a temporary quick and dirty tool box out of Baltic Birch. That was over 30 years ago, it's still going strong.

I worked at a hotel called the Bra Dor Lakes Inn for seven years. It was made out of Cedar logs. My favourite thing about the place the was the smell of the cedar. It just permeated the whole building sadly I eventually got used to it so I can’t smell it as much anymore.

I live in Vestal NY. I am fortunate to have local lumber yard that carries Baltic birch plywood in 1/8" all the way up to 1" and they have free delivery.

I built a longboard from 3 ply arctic birch in middleschool wood shop, layered it 3 times (making 9 ply) to ensure strength. In hindsight I went overboard with the thickness since it can handle the weight of a car running over it

Home Depot stores (at least the ones here in the midwest) have a panel saw and will do 2 cuts for free on any 4'x8' sheet you buy. There's actually a Menards much closer but I buy most sheet goods from Home Depot since I can haul it home in my car. If I need full 4'x8' sheets, I borrow a vehicle that can carry them.

This is also the only readily availble material (NW US) in a 5' x 10' sheet size, besides something like MDF. This stuff is almost always flat as well, love it.

Completely off subject but seeing the bowcaster and baby yoda in the background makes a fun game out of gleaning the shooting timeline in some of these. Also echoing the wonderful smell of working with cedar.

I'm assuming arctic birch is the same as Baltic birch. Another benefit to the lack of voids is that you get way less chip out when cutting dados, grooves, rabbets, etc. Also, I have to brag; I live near a Menards. They carry Baltic birch and will cut it for you in store.

My probblem with Baltic Birch ply is that it mainly comes in 5'X5' sheets and my van can only carry 4' widths. Otherwise it's perfect. I use mainly Baltic Birch and New Zealand grown pine. Very clear and zero knots. Great combination.