Walnut or Walnut Plywood

[littlebhuddha]

I'm making a wall of bookcases for the mancave. Most of the plans I looked at included mostly plywood. They said it would be more stable and cost less. I thought I would save some money and use walnut plywood for the case and walnut for the trim. So I bought a couple of sheets of walnut plywood but I don't think this stuff is all that great. The veneer is applied in 5" strips and doesn't look good at all. Should I just bite the bullet and go with walnut or am I missing something about the plywood? What does everybody else use?

 

[DaveO]

I would use ply for case work, it is going to be much more stable than solid wood. Plus it is going to be a lot cheaper than solid wood, both in cost and time. The 5" strips of veneer is a technique called slip matching, and it is more desired than radial cut veneer. If you glued up boards to get your width you would end up with a similar look.
You will mostly see the trim, face-frame work anyways once the bookcase is loaded.

Dave

 

[tjgreen]

+1000 for what DaveO said. There might be people out there who still build a wall of built-ins from solid wood, but I don't know any of them.

 

[red]

+1 on what was said above. Pick some choice walnut for the face frame and trim and you will have an awesome looking bookcase wall.

Red

 

[nelsone]

I would definitely go with the ply for the case work. One word of caution though.. practice your finishing on scrap. The ply will take finish differently than the hard wood. At least it did when I made some with maple. I ended up using dye and got good color matching. It may be a non issue with walnut, but you may want to even the tone a bit.

 

[littlebhuddha]

Thanks, guys. I am going to go ahead as planned. I've got a week of vacation coming at the end of the month. It should be done by then.