hey guys adam savage here in my cave answering questions from tested patrons and today's question
comes from jamie vs and jamie j-i-j-a-i-m-y uh vs wants to know hi adam what is your favorite
type of wood for building tool storage i think i've seen you generally use plywood any pros and
cons to the most general types of panel wood oh yes there are a lot of pros and cons yeah
okay where do i begin my bread and butter material here in the shop is half inch arctic
birch ply it has many plies we're going to grab some of that and grab some of that we'll grab
this yeah that's good okay what else what else we're going to get yeah okay so oh man
okay baltic birch ply that's my bread and butter that is like it's how i think half inch baltic
birch ply i love it i mean i carry plywood i i try and keep a stock of quality plywood uh
of many thicknesses eighth inch quarter inch half inch three quarter inch and one inch and i don't
use a lot of one inch but i try and keep some of it around here because
i like it for its engineering capabilities but this right here is baltic birch ply um
this is uh i think what they call bbc uh so it's a b there's a i can't quite remember
but it basically is there nobody any longer except super high-end makers i guess make a
like a grade birch ply on both sides i think the main stuff that you can buy these days is b grade
which is fantastic be great on one side and a bc on the other side i think that's how that breaks
down you can see the plies here there's like one two three four five six seven eight nine
plies um i became familiar with this stuff at industrial light magic because this is the ideal
material for laser cutting specifically because it does not have voids inside normal plywood like
this and here's some just classic shite hardware store plywood this stuff is i can yeah i could
break the stuff with my hands this this this garbage plywood still totally useful but
i i don't think much of it you can see this is three plies here
um and plywood is uh the reason plywood is so strong because each ply is laid
orthogonally to its predecessor so you get this combined amount of extra strength
but one of the things you don't know is that inside this plywood when they lay in some of
those pieces sometimes there are voids and they concern themselves mostly with the outside not
the interior levels and when you're laser cutting and you hit one of those voids it can greatly aid
you in catching your laser cutter on fire and that's a bad thing so you don't want that so
we used a lot of arctic birch apply for the laser cutting we did at ilm when we were laser cutting
frameworks for things um i fell in love with its tensile strength its rigidity its smooth surface
so the pros for this are it has beautiful finishable sides
lots of layers which means tons of extra strength no voids laser-cut it all day long uh cons
it's expensive it's also hard to get um in fact here in the bay area i'm having trouble finding
anyone who will cut it for me and i can't deal with four by eight sheets of material in this shop
which means i'm eventually going to buy a track saw so i can
deal with four by eight material in the shop the problem is that lumber yards don't want
the onus of making perfect cuts and a 4x8 to deliver it to you which makes sense
that's a lot of extra time to spend making perfect cuts uh but it also means that it's
really hard to get this stuff so i actually buy it at a kind of a premium on amazon
but again it's expensive if you go and ask for finish ply at a normal hardware store around
america and i discovered this while i was on tour and trying to find arctic birch reply because like
i think about this stuff so specifically in terms of its engineering capabilities that if you if i
am thinking about this stuff and you bring me this stuff this three ply with a veneer on each side
this is also garbage to me because it look if all you have to do is fill a hole with a panel this is
fine this is fine but if what you want is the kind of stuff i want out of this like engineering out
of it like you know i could put two holes here and cut a long thin line and use this as a tape holder
in fact i will show you that that's what i do here here we go this is some like seven ply quarter
inch plywood and i'm using it to hold up tape like this is an engineering execution of plywood
that you could only do with that high quality plywood you could not do that
with this it would not last it would not survive
ah so where was i i just look the fact is is that i use plywood both for building
things like boxes and storage for which these plywoods would be fine if you
glued them well and uh secured them well and clamped them and all that stuff these plywoods
would probably be fine for all of that but i also use my plywood as an engineering medium
and the tensile strength and the the the various qualities i get out of arctic birch ply make it
just leagues better for the kind of engineering i'm always thinking about than this stuff this
is another example of what's called a finish ply and again you can see here it's just three plies
with a veneer on each side um this veneer is a shiny one it actually makes this hard to glue to
uh yeah i wish uh i wish we had i wish more of the world had access to better plywood because
it's such a dream to work with this stuff it really is it's just a freaking delight um
yeah so i i like i want to make it yeah i just i think i've already made that clear
yeah i i go for the spendy stuff because i use it for way more than a lot of the normal things
plywood gets used for um i hope that was somewhat informative i didn't mean this to be a diatribe
on what i do and don't like about plywood but that is kind of what you asked for so
i appreciate the delightful question thank you guys so much by the way tested patrons your
questions continue to be awesome they're inspiring they engender lots of introspection from me i
often go home after this and tell my wife like ah that came up to this really interesting revelation
while answering this question seriously um that happens almost every time i i do these things so
thank you please keep submitting your questions tested patrons and i will continue to answer them
stay safe wear a mask and i will see you next time thanks guys i want to add this one note here um
is that um as far as other so plywood is my main i've i've said this at the beginning of
the video and i'll say for the rest of my life plywood's my bread and butter material but when
it comes to solid wood uh i really love i really love poplar and i love ash i love them for how
workable they are i like them how they feel and actually recently i made um the handle for
hellboy samaritan out of cedar and i also really liked working with cedar and i really dug the
awesome smell of working with cedar just thought i should add that before i completed your question
thanks