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Solid Wood Edging For Plywood

Putting Wood Edges On Plywood

Cabinets are usually made using some sort of sheet goods. Quite often it is plywood, and the need often arises to conceal the edges.

There are a number of methods of accomplishing this task. Some include using a common house hold iron, or a small edge banding iron, specifically designed to apply an edge banding tape. This tape is available in many materials, from real woods, which can be raw or prefinished, and also vinyl for use with plywoods and other sheet goods, such as melamine.

It is a simple process that involves cutting the edge banding to rough length and ironing it onto the edge. After which, the ends and edges must be trimed. There are small inexpensive tools designed for this. The result is a well hidden edge that is difficult to tell from solid wood. Commercial cabinet shops use both pre glued and raw edge banding, meaning no glue is pre applied. They use large expensive machines to handle this chore, some of which have glue pots on them. They apply the proper amount of glue as the pieces are automatically fed through the machines.

The machines also trin the edges and ends in the process. While expensive, they are a required machine in any shop doing production work. these machines can handle a large variety of materials from the previously mentioned tape, to larger, thicker materials, including plastic laminates, such as Formica. These machines are one of the three main machines needed for european style cabinets. The speed that these machines can apply edge banding is impressive.

The next common type of edging is solid wood to match the sheet goods. For example, if you're using Mahogany plywood, you would use Mahogany hardwood edges. Most often thee strips are cut into 1/8 inch this strips, and the glued and pinned onto the exposed edges. After which a small router equipped with a flush trim bit is used to trim the edges flush with the plywood, and often creat a small radius in the process.

Getting a little more sophisticated, but still following in the lines of solid wood edges, are a number of other cutters designed for use with a router, router table or shaper. Specialty bits are sold in matching sets to form a recess for the edging, and a counterpart to fill the recess. They are available in many styles, all of which accomplish the task. Typically, they are self aligning in design which makes gluing them in place and clamping the rather simple.

Burgess Edge Router Bits
Easily create a durable solid wood look wherever you have an exposed plywood, MDF or melamine edge! Great for edgebanding cabinet doors, shelves and cabinet edges. Burgess Edge Router Bits

Using a pin nailer will make attaching these pieces easy, leaving a very tiny hole to deal with.

All router bit companies have their own designs to chose from and have pretty much the same objective. Shown are a few options available from the house brand of MLCS, as well as a how to video, also from MLCS Woodworking.