Sheet Materials for Furniture
Every board you can build furniture from, with its standard sheet sizes, thicknesses and weight, and what each is good and bad at.
MDFMDF board (medium-density fibreboard) is an engineered sheet made from fine wood fibres pressed with resin under heat.Melamine boardMelamine board (MFC), sold as melamine sheets or melamine panels, is particleboard with a hard decorative paper face fused on both sides.PlywoodThe meaning of plywood: a sheet made of thin wood veneers (plies) glued with their grain crossing.Baltic birch plywoodBaltic birch plywood is plywood made entirely of birch veneers, thin and of equal thickness, glued with almost no voids.Hardwood plywoodHardwood plywood is plywood with a face veneer of a hardwood such as birch, maple, oak or walnut over a core of wood veneers, MDF or particleboard.Marine plywoodMarine plywood is high-grade plywood made with waterproof, boil-proof glue and durable face and core veneers with no voids, usually to the British standard BS 1088 (okoume, meranti, sapele) or as Douglas fir marine grade.CDX plywoodCDX plywood is softwood construction plywood with a C-grade face, a D-grade back and glue rated Exposure 1, the “X”.Plywood gradesPlywood grades describe the quality of the face and back veneers, and sometimes the glue.Prefinished plywoodPrefinished plywood is hardwood plywood, usually maple or birch, with a clear UV-cured finish applied at the factory on one or both faces.Pressure-treated plywoodPressure-treated plywood is softwood plywood, usually a CDX-type sheathing grade, that has had a wood preservative forced deep into it under pressure.MDO plywoodMDO plywood, medium density overlay, is exterior plywood with a resin-impregnated paper face bonded to one or both sides.ParticleboardParticle board (particleboard, or chipboard) is made from wood chips and resin pressed into sheets.Hardboard and HDFHardboard is a thin, dense sheet made of wood fibres pressed under heat and high pressure, often without added glue, usually 1/8 to 1/4 in (3 to 6 mm) thick.OSBOSB (oriented strand board) is made of large wood strands glued in layers.Blockboard and solid wood panelsBlockboard has a core of solid wood strips between veneers, which makes it very stiff for long shelves.WorktopsKitchen worktops come in long lengths (3000–4100 mm) and standard depths of 600–650 mm, with thicknesses from 12 mm (compact) to 40 mm (solid wood and laminate)..HPL laminateHPL (high-pressure laminate) is a hard decorative sheet 0.8–1 mm thick that is glued onto MDF or chipboard; compact HPL is a solid laminate panel 6–12 mm thick that needs no core..Plywood sheet sizesStandard 4 × 8 and metric sheet sizes, with MDF and melamine.Plywood thickness chartNominal vs actual thickness, in inches and mm.