Best was to cut birch ply

bauderline

Folks,

Looking for some advice on the best way to cut birch ply if I want long straight lines. I want to construct some shelving for my new house using birch plywood but I want to be able to cut the wood dead straight.

I guess my best bet is some sort of table saw, is there anything I can buy within reason that will allow me to handle 8x4 sheets of this stuff and cut it the way that I want ?

Also as regards a lacquer finish where can I buy clear lacquer and what is the best way to apply it ? Spray it ?

B.

JoeB-

Your best bet is a circular saw and a straight edge.

A great way can be to lay down an 8' x 4' of aeroboard or insulation, lay your panel on this and cut away. (This may be bad for the blade, I'm not sure)

You can also make a sawboard which would provide chip free cuts on one side of the blade and ensure very accurate cuts... basically this would be a base board of about 12" x 8'... screw on a straight edge (fence) of about 1.5" x 8' leaving about 2" on one side of the fence and 8.5" on the cutting side.

Hopefully the distance from the edge of your circular saw will be about 8" from the side... so run it along the straight edge on your saw board, this will trim the long edge of the base board and from then on to use the sawboard you simply place it right up to the cut line and cut away...

Cheers
Joe

bauderline

Thanks I had bother picturing that until I dug this out !

http://members.aol.com/woodmiser1/sawbd.htm

He explains it fairly well and the diagrams drive the point home.

Top tip Joe thanks !

B.

Fingalian

Yep, that sure is a great jig. Gotta git me one of those.

xt40

get 2 sheets and use one for a straight edge.
use a circular saw to do the cutting
cut them on the grass. itll work perfectly as long as its not too damp.
any green minor stains will sand out.
rather than using ply, you should use veneered mdf and get proper veneer edging to finish it off, not the fake stuff. noyeks have 40mm edging as well as the usual 22mm. by glueing 2 shelves together and using the 40mm you would have nice chunky shelves

irishthump

bauderline wrote: »

Folks,

Looking for some advice on the best way to cut birch ply if I want long straight lines. I want to construct some shelving for my new house using birch plywood but I want to be able to cut the wood dead straight.

To be honest, the best bet would be to get the timber supplier to rip the 8x4 boards to width. They will probably charge you a small fee for each cut, but it would be well worth it.

JoeB-

Yes, getting it cut is a great option.

Woodworkers (the shop) in Dublin used to charge about €2 per cut piece, this is very cheap in my opinion, after all, you may only have ten pieces to be cut. And the cutting will be done on a 10,000 plus panel saw with a scoring blade.

Cheers
Joe