MATERIA At the Core o

GUEST CONTRIBUTORS: Shayna &

Light MDF vs Dark MDF

As described above, MDF is just sawdust and glue It has no woodgrain and hence no natural beauty of its own This also makes MDF smooth as it has no wood fibers Whereas plywood is normally constructed with outer veneers (a thin piece of wood on the outsides) and some kind of core material on the inside (the core can be made of more thin pieces of wood or MDF) Maple, Birch, Walnut, Oak, and Cherry are some of the different wood species that are used in the outer veneers Due to plywood having grain, it may need to be sanded Even on the smoothest plywood (because some woods are smoother than others) a light sanding would still be a best practice.

Plywood Core

MDF Core

Hardwood plywood and hardwoods (solid wood) include the same species of woods i e Birch, Maple, etc, but are NOT the same thing The difference is that hardwood plywood is made of thin layers of wood glued together as described above, while hardwood boards are literally boards are literally pieces of solid wood The width of a solid piece of hardwood is limited to the width of the tree it came from as opposed to plywood in which the veneers are peeled from a tree allowing for much larger widths for example 48” wide sheets.