Plywood

fifthwheel

I am building a removable three box system for the rear of my Peugeot Expert van. Basic storage boxes with hinged lids, I have a lot of options when shopping for ply.
I have used ply before with a very thin face which sanded off when prepping for paint I dont want that again but cant remember if it was hardwood or not.
Ideally a ply to paint when I have finished with a good edge when cut with a face I can sand. I dont want to spend marine ply money but maybe somewhere in between cheap and marine. Any suggestions for the right ply. john
 

Deleted member 4404

For things like that I just use softwood ply from B&Q. They will cut it free which saves handling full sheets. A coat of primer will bring up the whiskers, which can be sanded down before the next coat. For exposed edges a glued and pinned timber edging strip gives protection to the laminates.
 

wildebus

Forum Member
I used to use the hardwood ply from B&Q (chose hardwood as seemed always the same price as softwood?). It always did the job but was never the most decorative finish.
I recently moved to using Travis Perkins for ply and with a trade account that ended up being a fair bit cheaper AND the surface was a lot nicer and the edges didn't chip as much.
No idea how either take to paint though as never painted them but either left bare or covered.
 

Millie Master

Forum Member
Personally speaking I would never by choice ever buy plywood from any of the major diy stores as generally speaking the quality is dire and the prices are astronomic!!
Most towns will have a good wood or timber merchant or even a comprehensively stocked builders merchants.

As I have written on here and on other similar places many times before, before the start of my build I drew up a list of the many types of materials I would be using during the build and printed the list out, I then went along to several (3) of the local trade supplying companies in my then local town of Newtown (Powys) and told them all these exact words, "I am about to start a major building project and this list shows the types of materials I will be using, will you be willing to allow me to have/open a cash trade account, oh and what prices are they likely to be"?

The local small group of Boys & Boden came up with the best prices which included an eye watering discount of 60% off the retail prices of all woods and ply's and the quality of them was head and shoulders better than those supplied by the high street diy stores.

Because of the massive savings I was receiving, a lot of my build was done using marine ply.
 

Millie Master

Forum Member
We bought all our beach faced ply from our local timber merchant, they were very helpful and allowed me to be chosie on which sheets I wanted.
Most of our finished ply has been polyurethane varnished as the finish, so it had to be quality ply.
Darcar.

Same here Darren, I used 4mm oak faced ply for the facings of the entire interior and it simply had to be of the highest quality. That was from Boys & Boden in Newtown when we lived in that area.
Now living across here in South Lincs, in our closest town of Grantham there is an amazing timber merchant known as Woodlines in Commercial Road, the only negative comment I can make is that the man who cuts the sheets for you has absolutely ZERO sense of humour but boy oh boy do they know their stuff and as for the prices (even before taking my trade discount off), well they make those charged by B&Q or Travis Perkins for crap quality wood look utterly stupid!

Phil
 

GEOFF

In the past I have used laminate faced 15mm lightweight ply from Morland, but as our Maxus vans are meant to be fairly inexpensive finished vehicles this time I decided to use"raw" lightweight poplar ply and a paint finish. To date I have not tried to apply any finish, but was thinking of using a hard wearing satin finish 2k. paint. I hope that this will mean that I can dispense with any edge trims after sanding and filling the cut edges. Geoff.
 
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trevskoda

Forum Member
In the past I have used laminate faced 15mm lightweight ply from Morland, but as our Maxus vans are meant to be fairly inexpensive finished vehicles this time I decided to use"raw" lightweight poplar ply and a paint finish. To date I have not tried to apply any finish, but was thinking of using a hard wearing satin finish 2k. paint. I hope that this will mean that I can dispense with any edge trims after sanding and filling the cut edges. Geoff.
Use 2 pack epoxy first which gives a supurb grip,then 2 pack poly like sigma or juton clark.
 

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