I’m in the process of building another layout, this one in So. Florida. For wahtever reason, 1/2" AC indoor plywood seems to be scarce. Home Depot has 1/2" Sande Plywood, which seems to be a home Depot exclusive. Some further research that I found online suggests it’s 7 ply, but is soft and not durable. It’s also about 20% cheaper than AC plywood. I’ve called all over Palm Beach County, Florida trying to locate the AC plywood, with little success. One place had it, but would not rip it in half for me.
I want to use this as my subroadbed, as I will use cork on top. It’s for HO scale, and I won’t use foam, and I prefer the wood. The layout will not have any inclines or risers, so this will be on 1"x3" frames. This is not my first layout, and I have used the other plywood with no issues.
Has anyone else used the Sande Plywood from Home Depot? Would appreciate any feedback on it.
I used one sheet of Home Depot Sande 3/4" ply during benchwork construction. Did not like it. Veneer is super thin so it chips out easily on cuts. Also did not hold screws as well as other hardwood plys I have used. Also used one sheet of Menard’s 3/4" birch face. Very poor quality. Lots of voids, face veneer chipped out horribly. Finally bit the $$ bullet and used Home Depot 3/4" birch face ply. Wonderful stuff. Built all remaining benchwork and all sub-roadbed with it. Joy to work with.
From what I’ve read or found, it’s made for Home Depot out of what I don’t know. The last words on this product that I found was from 2005 and the comments were not stellar, to say the least. I may siwtch it up to birch for about $10 more… There are lumber yards, just a handful and I found only one that had it, but couldn’t rip it for me and my table saw can’t handle it.
I don’t recall all the details but when I researched what was available here (TX) a few years ago I decided on some 5/8" for my cookie cutter layout. I’m pretty sure it was from HD. If they have that it might be cheaper, and stronger, than 1/2" birch veneer plywood.
I have a Skilsaw. If I need to rip a piece of plywood, I get out my 8’ piece of 1/8" x 2" aluminum barstock (from the hardware store) and clamp it to the plywood. The plywood is held off the “ground” by an assortment of carefully placed 2x4’s.
Yes, it takes a long time to do. So I try to avoid it and have the plywood cut at the yard. But it DOES work. And there are occasions where I need to do it.
I used 3/4" firply, good one side, for my subroadbed. Much of the layout is on curves, and I used a jigsaw to cut at least two sheets of it for curves only, starting at 30" and working up in 2" increments on the first sheet. The second sheet was done mostly as 32" and 34", before making some larger ones.
For straights, I used both 1"x4" clear pine and more 3/4" firply, and, like Ed, ripped it as needed using a worm-drive Skilsaw.
With the appropriate guides and clamps, the saw can be used to do pretty-much anything a tablesaw can do, but it takes up a lot less room to store it. [swg]
I used 5/8" t&g sheathing plywood for the upper level of the layout, which works well enough, but it’s in a table-top style. I doubt that it would be suitable for cut-out roadbed, though.
I buy lumber and plywood from a lumberyard, not a big box store.
you may have better luck trying to find 15/32" AC plywood. true 1/2" plywood is extremely hard to find these days. It similar to what they did with 2x4 and 1x4 where the true dimensions are no longer valid. A 2x4 is actually 1.5x 3.5 inches because they can make more of them cheaper. Plywood is the same way. they save money by not having to 1/32" per sheet. 15/32" is much more common these days. 15/32" plywood acts just the same (as far as i can tell) as true 1/2" ply.
I know I haven’t commented on what you originally asked but i figured I could give you an alternative in case you don’t like what you have found so far.
Yes, I know that 1/2" plywood is really 15/32", thank you. I’ve used it here in NJ on the layout here, but trying to find it in So. Florida is a challenge, to say the least. I don’t mind spending the money on it, as long as I can find it and have someone rip them for me. If I could ship it on a plane in cargo from NJ, trust me I would do it, as I have a great source for it. Just price prohibitive to do that. My layout here in NJ was built with 1x3 and 1x4 and the 1/2" AC ply and very happy with it. I may try to look in Broward County, Florida, as well. I must have called a half dozen lumber yards in Palm Beach county, only one had it and would not rip it for me.
Where in South Florida are you? I internet searched a Home Depot store in Tampa and they seemed to have B/C 1/2 inch plywood in stock. If you are going to cover the plywood with some sort of roadbed I’m not sure that A/C is necessary.
I’m on the east coast of Florida. Have you seen the 1/2" BC plywood at HD? The knots in them are rampant and in areas that won’t have cork I want that smoother finish. Most of the lumber yards I’ve contacted concentrate on exterior plywood and marine plywood. I’ll keep searching. Thanks for your help in looking as well!
Plywood has been made in metric thickness since 1978. The imperial inch measurements we know and love are just the closest approximation.
You are spot on about 2x4s, at least in the US. Greed started it. The advent of planed lumber accelerated it. Mills finally adopted the NIST and American Lumber Standard Committee’s sizing recommendations to put a stop to ever shrinking finished lumber. Prior to this it must have driven designers and builders nuts.
This may have something to do with living nearly at sea level or in some places below. Also something to do with being slapped by hurricanes every year…
How do you plan to travel to the Florida? If you are driving, pre-rip a quantity of lumber in NJ and vehicle it down there?
I usually do minimal scenery, more about the switching and operations. According to a friend in So. Florida, there’s only one place that carries what I want. I’m down there the end of April, so that will be my first stop. Once I get it, I’ll let it sit and cure. The room is climate controlled, so no big heat fluctuation.
I’ve worked most of my life in construction. Most of that in remodel. Many of the houses go back to, oh, about 1906 or so (SF Bay Area).
In old house framing, most load bearing walls have studs that measure 2" x 3 1/2". And also 2" x 2 1/2" for interior non-load bearing walls. Those studs are usually rough cut.
You can buy today rough cut 2x4’s. They ARE 2" x 4". Well, more or less. But I’ll tell you, so were the old studs I run into–more or less. Full 2x4’s are pretty useless in construction; I can’t recall the last time I saw any. The standard 2x4 is 1 1/2" x 3 1/2". And has been that for a long time, at least 60 years.
Current 2x4’s are indeed planed. But note that the 3 1/2" dimension stays the same as it has for over 100 years.
So. Old 2x4’s weren’t 2" x 4" either.
It IS interesting that the construction industry went from rough cut studs to planed. As someone who has occasion to touch studs, I’ll say I prefer planed. Splinters.
The main problems with the “Sande” plywood available at Home Depot is the very poor consistency of the wood itself, open voids between layers and/or voids filled with a filler made of very fine sawdust and some type of binder. Not only will such voids not help to hold screws, they cause unwanted kinks in roadbed grade transitions. Some of the product reviews for this plywood even report a different number of plies from one end of a sheet to the other!
Finding quality lumber at an affordable price is also a problem here in Southern California. Home Depot (and Lowes) used to carry a product called 1/2" Hardwood Plywood which was almost as good as Baltic Birch plywood. Seven plies, no voids and sanded on both sides. I built most of my layout using this product with excellent results. However, by the time I got around to building the final section of my layout, this product had been replaced by the awful “Sande” plywood. I had to go to a traditional lumber yard to buy a sheet of 1/2" Baltic Birch plywood (at three times the price) just to finish the last section of benchwork.
If you can’t find a decent plywood product at a resonable price, I would take a serious look at building spline roadbed using Masonite strips. Then you would fill in the spaces between the roadbed using extruded foam insulation board, assuming that is available in Florida (it is special order only in S. California). If not, good old hardshell scenery would work.
LION did not use plywood at all for most of the layout of him.
Him made table with 1/2" Celotex panels. Him used 10 of them. Similar to Homosote, but much lighter, more rigid, and easier to cut. Him laid tracks of him directly on the Celotex with no roadbed at all.
Of course these Celotex boards are no longer available. They disappeared with the advent of fire codes, but we salvaged them from previous buildings that we have torn down.
Other wise, LION just use what ever scrap wood or other materials that Him could finde. OSB board from an old packing crate, foam, 2" fibergalss roofing insulation, you know, any sort of stuff that I did not have to pay for.
Hey… The railroad runs. If you got lots of money and want to actually pay for stuff, that is your look out, eh?
First, back in the day, 100 years ago or more, building practices and materials varyed by region. What was being done is the west is nothing like what was being done back east.
I too am in construction, I am a historic restoration designer/consultant, as well as an experianced old house carpenter.
My latest project:
My own home:
My home, built in 1901, in Forest Hill, Maryland, is framed with rough cut Oak, C
