Last year I made a desk add on for my wife - Looked better than the
original commercial work. I recently added a large pull-out tray for
holding paper work while doing accounting. The original desk was
Particle board (not even MDF) - with melamine pickled Oak finish.

On the original work I used Rotary saw veneer Oak 3/4 and 5/8 ply - and
made oak banding out of a small piece of Oak. Even did steam bending of
the banding for the curved cut-outs at the bottom.

The tray was going to be a quick "batch job" since I did not have a
clear piece of oak left for the banding - and the tray was made of scrap
plywood from the original project.

I glued two 10"wide ply pieces for the tray -- roughly 20" X 20" glued
up. Then, I hid the seam with a strip of Walnut -- since the seam was
pretty bad actually. After looking at the effect, I canceled the trip to
buy some more Oak. I finished the tray with walnut edging. The contrast
looks nice, and the ugly seam is now a "feature" with the walnut inlay.
The dark trim around the "pickled Oak" finish looks great. All the wood
except the walnut was scrap. So total cost of the tray is about $.51
($.01 for the glue, $.50 worth of walnut :-) Plus labour -- about 2
hours including finishing.

So just use your imagination. Even consider contrasting materials.

For the heck of it I will post a link to the desk later -- showing the
original add on and the "new" style..


Larry Bud wrote:
Making a DVD cabinet, and was thinking of saving some $$ to use oak ply
for shelves and edge them. Anything wrong with this?

The shelved are actually quite small (maybe 6'x7" each, but there are
20 of them).


--
Will
Occasional Techno-geek