TIL my local lumber yard's 'premium' plywood is actually garbage

Went to Johnson's Lumber over in Portland yesterday to grab some Baltic birch for a built-in. Guy at the counter swore their stuff was top grade, but when I opened the sheets in the shop, like 4 out of the 8 had voids the size of my thumb in the inner plys. Are you guys seeing this at your yards too? I'm about to start ordering everything wholesale just to avoid the headache.

3 comments

3 Comments

william_craig716d ago

Gotta push back on this a little. I've been going to Johnson's for years and yeah their plywood has the occasional void but it's not like Home Depot where you're guaranteed to get warped garbage. The key is you gotta pick through the stack yourself and not just take whatever the kid brings out. I've pulled plenty of perfectly good sheets from there with clean inner plys. Plus their prices are way better than the wholesale outfits once you factor in delivery fees and minimum order quantities. Maybe you just got unlucky or caught a bad batch, but writing off the whole yard over 4 bad sheets out of 8 seems harsh.

hannahj4916d ago

Alright so 4 out of 8 sheets with voids - what grade were you actually buying there? Because Johnson's has like 3 different grades of sanded ply and if you grabbed the cheap stuff that's on you, not the yard. Were they those big football shaped voids in the middle of the sheet or just a few small knots on the edges? That makes a huge difference for whether the board is actually trash or just cosmetic.

troyc1716d ago

Wait, wait - you actually trust the yard kid to pick your sheets for you? After that one time they gave me a warped 4x8 with a knot cluster the size of my fist, I always pull my own stack from the middle of the pile.