There has been some discussion about china plywood as opposed to the plywood
made in Canada and the U.S. here lately. I had my first experience with it
today. As you know most of my items are small, they can be held in one
hand. Wood that most of you would discard is often great for my uses. I
went to my local lumber yard and ordered a 3/4 sheet of birch plywood for a
project, looked at the chinaply and it looked good in the dark confines of
the lumber shed, stacked in a rack between other sheet goods. Cost was $30
less then the U.S. made ply, so I told them to load up a sheet. When I got
it off the rack and did a quick layout of my project on it I found that 50%
of the sheet would be waste, due to plastic wood fills, cracks and other
"surface " problems. The veneer on the surface was only a few thousands of
an inch thick and poorly surfaced (looked like a bad planner job). Went
through about 10 more sheets and all were pretty much the same. Loaded up a
sheet of U.S. made ply and gladly paid the difference in price. Bottom line
I got better quality wood for less then half the price I would have paid for
the chinaply and half the trouble and labor with less then 1/10th the waste.