just bought three sheets of 3/4" birch plywood and one sheet
of 1/2" birch plywood from my local Home Depot.
This has to be some of the worst plywood I have ever purchased!
the surface veneers are extremely thin
the chipout is absolutely horrible.
can sand through the veneer in less than 20 seconds

I finished sanding and staining my entertainment center yesterday, and I'm
happy to report it all worked out OK in the end. I managed to not sand
through the thin veneer in any place critical (I did expose the veneer in
one small spot on the back, but thankfully it won't normally be seen.).

The chipout that is still exposed (mostly on the ends of the shelves) is
barely visible once sanded and stained.

Thankfully, whatever the core ply's are made of, it seems to stain the same
color as the surface veneer. Both the chipouts and the exposed veneer on
the back almost disappear when the stain is applied. That was a huge
relief.

The plywood is also riddled with numerous voids.

Since all of the plywood edges are covered or hidden, this turned out to be
not much of an issue.

looks more like oak than birch. I double-checked the label, it says birch

I still think the 1/4 panel I bought is probably oak, but it seemed to
stain up the same color as the rest of the project. So unless someone goes
up and compares the grain pattern on the shelves, I don't think anyone will
ever know. If it bugs me too much, it would be easy to make a couple of new
shelves, but once the shelves have "stuff" on them, I doubt I'll even
notice what the grain is like.

So, today I'm going to start applying the finish coats of polyurethane.
That will probably take a few days to complete. I'll try to post some
pictures in the binaries newsgroup when I'm finished.

Take care,

Anthony