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Changed my mind on prefinished ply after seeing a cabinet shop in Grand Rapids
I always skipped prefinished plywood because I figured the edges chip out and the coating gums up blades. Then last month I helped a guy in Grand Rapids install a kitchen and he had 14 sheets of it stacked in his garage. I watched him crosscut every piece on a track saw with a 60 tooth blade and got zero chipout, and we wrapped all the exposed edges in 3/4 inch iron on banding in about 2 hours. We hung the uppers the same afternoon instead of waiting a day for poly to dry, and the finish was more even than anything I spray. Now I'm doing the math on what a full kitchen run would cost me in time saved. Anybody here run prefinished on face frames too, or do you still spray those?
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chen.avery11d ago
14 sheets in a garage in Grand Rapids in August means that coating is sitting in 90 degree heat and high humidity before it even gets cut. Plywood cores move when the moisture swings like that, and I've seen prefinished sheets that sat around too long start to bow just enough that your face frames won't sit flat. You also can't sand out a mistake, a scratch, or a glue spot on that finish, so a bad cut or a slip with the banding trimmer means a whole sheet goes in the scrap pile instead of getting fixed. And spraying face frames gives you a finish that actually matches the grain and tone across the whole kitchen, not a factory coat that reads a little flat next to the banding on the edges. Two hours of iron on banding sounds great until you've got 40 linear feet of exposed edge and the adhesive starts letting go in a year on the lower cabinets near the dishwasher.
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